


The Illusion of Free Will

by leopardwrites



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, First Meetings, First Time, M/M, Pining, Romance, Time Travel, time travelers wife
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 82,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leopardwrites/pseuds/leopardwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time Traveler's Wife fusion.</p><p> </p><p> <i>It’s hard to keep track of all these different Sherlocks at different ages. It seems like just last week he was convincing a seven year old Sherlock to smile because it was his birthday and then fighting the awkwardness of him asking if John was married in the future. </i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Probably because it was just last week for him. Fucking time travel.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First meeting, one

**Author's Note:**

> I really just wanted to answer the question: what would Sherlock be like if he met and was influenced by John from a young age? And the idea grew from there really.

_29 th January 2010 (John is 32) _

It’s the first bit of sunshine London has seen in a typically arduous, dreary January. John walks through the park on this particular morning for no other reason than because he woke up, opened his curtains, and saw something besides grey outside his window. It was worth commemorating with a walk, if nothing else.

The first month of the new decade has passed much like any other January – New Year’s resolutions have long been forgotten in the monotony of day-to-day life after the needless excess and excitement of Christmas.

John didn’t make a New Year’s resolution. Ella hadn’t liked it when he told her that in one of their therapy sessions, he could tell by the amount of words she scrawled down in her notebook, eyebrows furrowed. Always those same joined-up, round, looping letters like a teenage girl’s handwriting. It was somehow incongruous, John thought, such juvenile writing in a woman who strived to maintain such a professional, unflappable demeanour.

 _Not making plans for the future_ , she wrote.

John had to smile at that one. It was hard to make plans for the future with problems like John’s. Hard to walk into the job he’d been trained for with a psychosomatic limp, a tremor in his dominant hand, and a penchant for time travelling when put under stress.

Future, past, present. The words alone can make him smile now, a sharp, bitter thing.

“Nothing happens to me,” he told her.

It was a lie though. She’d never believe the truth.

“John! John Watson!”

Mike Stamford’s booming voice breaks him out of his thoughts and chases him down the path. Much though he wants to, John can’t escape. Not with a limp and a cane, that third footstep he tries so hard to ignore. He jabs the end of the cane a little too forcefully against the ground when he has to stop and the jolt travels all the way up his arm. The pain is worth it; he feels a bit better as he turns around to greet the man holding out his hand to him.

“Stamford, Mike Stamford. We were at Bart’s together.”

“Yes,” John says, giving a tight smile and extending his free hand for a brief shake. “Sorry, yes. Mike. Hello.”

Mike takes in his reservation and grins. “Yeah, I know, I got fat.”

John could not have been thinking anything more different to that, but he recognises the self-consciousness for what it is. He knows a pre-emptive strike when he sees one. “No…” he begins.

Mike glances at his occupied hand, leaning on the cane.

“I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at,” Mike says, his wince of sympathy making John’s knuckles turn white around the cane’s handle. “What happened?”

It’s too glorious an opening to let slide. John goes for the kill. “I got shot.”

The look on Mike Stamford’s face is priceless.

  
  
\----  


The Criterion café’s coffee is sublime. John sips slowly, savouring each mouthful, and the pleasure it brings is almost enough to drown out the annoyance that is this rotund version of a former friend and classmate sat next to him on a park bench. A reminder of his past and all that he’s lost.

John is aware he’s being a bastard. Stamford is a decent, sound bloke and John always liked him well enough. But Stamford has a wife and two kids, a sedentary lifestyle that’s enabled him to _get_ fat and he’s teaching. John meanwhile is crippled, lonely, and miserable at the age of thirty-two. He can’t pursue his dreams, hold down a job, or keep a steady girlfriend because of his condition. He’s in no mood for reminiscing or socialising.

He nods and laughs in appropriate places though – on the surface, he is perfectly polite and apparently engaged in the conversation. He’s not that much of a bastard that he can’t be civil. Not yet anyway.

He has to focus more when Mike starts asking him questions. “What about you? Just staying in town until you get yourself sorted?”

John shakes his head. “I can’t afford to stay in London on an army pension, not without getting a job.”

“Ah, but there are plenty of jobs in London and I can’t see you going anywhere else.” Mike playfully nudges his left arm and John wants to scream. “That’s not the John Watson I know.”

“I am not the John Watson you-” John takes a few deep breaths, shifts his coffee cup to his right hand and clenches his left hand against his thigh where it’s started to tingle. Not _here_ , he thinks, not _now_.

He calms down and the tingling passes. He’s not going to travel. John exhales, a slight quiver to the long breath.

Mike is watching his actions with a thoughtful look. “You’re a strange one, John.”

“If you only knew,” he replies with a grin.

“Couldn’t you, I don’t know, get a flatshare or something?”

“I’d still have trouble with the money side of things without a job, Mike. Besides,” John’s grin turns rueful, “who’d want me for a flatmate?”

Mike seems amused. “You know, you’re the second person to say that to me today.”

John blinks, considering. There’s a faint sense of being set up that comes from his well-meaning mother’s many attempts at arranging dates for him with girls he knew from school. Well, he thinks, bring it on. He’s got nothing to lose. “Who was the first?”

  
  


* * *

  
  
_29 th January 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 32)_

Sherlock is not working off tension, or aggression, or any of those other silly things Molly had accused him of. He is conducting an experiment, a pertinent experiment into the bruise pattern that forms after flogging a corpse for half an hour. His personal feelings have nothing to do with it. Molly _would_ bring feelings into it, considering how prominently she displays hers.

He doesn’t necessarily mean to be cruel to her, but her advances are unfortunately as advantageous as they are unwelcome. He knows John would disapprove of how shamelessly he uses her, but John is not _here_. And Sherlock’s conscience has been John himself since he was just eight years old.

His mouth curves into a smile as he remembers John forcing him to give Cook’s cat back. He’d protested violently – stomping and ranting, the works. Until John had threatened not to visit again, that is. Then he had raced off to return the creature to its rightful owner, chagrined but unharmed, and he had even _apologised_. Not sincerely, of course, but that was by-the-by.

The smile sours as he remembers another example of John’s unwavering moral principles and restraint. He shifts uncomfortably at the memory of throwing himself at a man nearly twenty years his senior when he was just eighteen himself. The embarrassment of that spectacular blunder will never leave him, he’s quite certain.

He then recalls his earlier thought that Molly’s advances were unwelcome and, out of some misplaced sense of camaraderie, offers her a small, conciliatory twitch of his lips when she brings him the tea he asked for. The look she gives him in return is that of a rabbit in the headlights and suggests that he has just grown a second head before her, rather than smiled. Well, Sherlock thinks, he won’t try that again.

The tea she makes is dreadful, besides.

He lets it go cold and then asks her to bring him coffee instead next time before going to sit at the microscope to analyse some of the samples he brought with him from the O’Donaghue case.

  
  
\----  


“Bit different from my day,” Sherlock hears the tail-end of the quiet remark when two men walk into the lab. One of them is Stamford – he recognises the bumbling gait and laboured breathing. The other man, the one who’d made the remark, is walking unsteadily with a cane. The voice is familiar, it sounds just like… Sherlock stops the thought before it can form. Twice in one day is not healthy for him, he knows from experience.

Stamford is about to answer the other man, he’s just beginning his reply when Sherlock talks over him. “Mike, can I borrow your phone?” he asks without glancing up from the microscope.

“What happened to yours?” Mike asks in return. He’s already searching through his jacket pockets for his phone, going by the rustling noises of his clothes. “Not left it in a cadaver again, have you?”

“That error was Miss Hooper’s, not mine.”

She had taken his phone off the desk while he had been busy with something or other last month in an effort to program her number in. A marvellous bit of subterfuge, one that hadn’t escaped his notice, naturally, but he was entertained by her boldness in the attempt. He can tolerate her when she’s bold. It’s the timidity he can’t stand.

And the occasional bouts of anxiety-induced clumsiness – God only knows how she managed to mislay his phone in a fifty-one year old white male.

Sherlock looks up as he finishes his sentence and the ‘mine’ fades on his tongue, coming out strangled and thin. The text he wants to send to Lestrade is pushed to the back of his mind, the bulk of his thoughts now occupied with memories and conflicting emotions.

“John,” he says faintly because, for that precise second of time, Sherlock Holmes can’t actually think of anything else to say. There would be few at Scotland Yard who would believe him capable of being rendered speechless, but this was enough of a shock to do it.

His brain reboots after that disconcerting moment, and he’s taking in the colour of John’s hair, his complexion, the lines in his face, approximate height and weight. He’s young, Sherlock realises, as young as he’s ever seen him.

But he’s holding a cane. Sherlock frowns at it. He’s never seen John with a cane, not even at his oldest at almost forty.

The limp is psychosomatic, he reads that instantly. There is nothing wrong with John’s leg; it’s most likely a phantom injury, displaced from some other, real wound. Left shoulder, probably.

The most unforeseen realisation is that there is no spark of recognition in John’s eyes. No warmth, no depth of loyalty and devotion that he’d come to crave, to hoard and jealously guard, to store and to take out and examine and put back, safe and sound.

This John isn’t _his_ John.

As if to prove the conclusion he’s just reached, John asks mildly: “Do I know you?”

Of course, this is their first meeting. Their timelines have converged, just as John said they would when they last met in Cambridge.

Sherlock clears his throat, looks down the microscope again, and turns the wheels for something to do with his hands. His fingers slip, sweat-slick against the plastic and metal. His heart is pounding; his body is acting against his will. That ridiculous, childish affection he’s harboured for so many years causing his autonomic nervous system to flare up. Sentiment.

Sherlock feels horribly exposed, though he rationally knows it would take someone with his own intellect and skill for observation to detect the change in him.

“No,” he says. “My… my mistake,” he hears Stamford splutter in the background. Curse the man, can’t he just go _away_? “I thought you were someone I used to know.” Sherlock looks up again and gives a shrug, aiming for casual, unconcerned.

John’s eyebrows draw together – he’s either heard that one before, or he just saw through it – and Sherlock realises he hasn’t covered as well as he’d thought. Damn. He really must stop underestimating John’s intelligence.

“I’ve got a phone you can use,” John says, walking towards him and holding Sherlock’s gaze as he approaches. He does know, Sherlock can see it in his eyes.

It’s like a game, he thinks, this pretence: Sherlock knows who John is; John knows Sherlock knows and so on and so forth. The only oblivious one here is Stamford. If they could just get him to leave…

“Mike, I think you left your phone downstairs after we came in,” John says, eyes never leaving Sherlock’s face, roving back and forth like he’s doing his own version of Sherlock’s keen assessment.

Mike clicks his fingers. “Of course, when I stopped at Ricky’s desk. Be back in a minute. You two should keep getting to know each other. John, this is-”

“Sherlock Holmes,” he interrupts smoothly, and Mike rolls his eyes and leaves with a creak of the lab door before it bangs shut behind him.

As he reaches Sherlock, John hands him the phone and Sherlock takes it, deliberately brushing his fingers against John’s as he does. Little to no reaction from John. He doesn’t know why he expected any differently.

He gleans what he can from the phone, and holds it out for John to take back.

“Don’t need it now,” he says.

John accepts his phone with a shrug. “John Watson. But you already knew that. You know about me, don’t you? You know about my... my condition.”

Sherlock nods back in concession and stands up to be level with John.  Or rather, _more_ level. He’s been taller than John since he was fifteen.

He doesn’t answer verbally though, so John takes it upon himself to keep talking. “Tell me I didn’t show up naked in your home or garden at some point,” he says, letting out a short, nervous laugh.

“Actually, you did,” Sherlock says, his deadpan answer a counterpoint to John’s flippant tone. “At several points, in fact.”

John’s eyebrows lift and Sherlock smirks.

“Who are you?” John asks. “And who are you to me?”

“Both good questions, though the first answer is subjective and depends on who you ask, and the second I can only guess at. At this moment in time the answer is, I suppose, nothing. Not yet, anyway.”

“I’ll take a subjective and no doubt biased answer to the first and that guess at the second then.”

Sherlock feels a small, inexplicable surge of fondness in his chest. Eight years of separation is much too long, he really can’t let that happen again.

“I’m a consulting detective – the only one in the world, I invented the job. And, as such, I hate guesswork.”

“You’re a detective and you never guess?”

“I observe, and from that I make logical steps to a conclusion. Deductive reasoning.”

“I’d call that guesswork.”

“ _You_ would.”

They look at each other for a moment, and then John laughs suddenly. Sherlock joins him, and it’s somewhat surreal to be laughing with John like this, here and now, when he’s done so a hundred times before as a child. This is different – new and fragile.

“You’re ahead of me,” John says after the laughter has subsided. “You know me, but I don’t know you at all. What’s a consulting detective anyway? Like a private detective?”

“No. I’m a consultant, so that means when the police are out of their depth – which is always – they come to me.”

“The police don’t consult amateurs.”

Sherlock gives him a withering glare and opens his mouth, intent on proving himself. Amateurs, indeed. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to show off under normal circumstances, let alone when speaking to a John who hasn’t met him before and doesn’t know what he can do yet. It’s about more than just proving himself, he realises. He wants to impress John.

He watches as he reels off his deductions, catching the way John drops his head down to look at his affected leg when Sherlock speaks about it, shifting his feet. He’s uncomfortable at having the limp brought up. It’s not going to be a problem for long; Sherlock is already plotting how to get rid of it based on that intermittent tremor in John’s left hand.

“So you were right,” he says after he’s finished his speech. “The police don’t consult amateurs. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, come look at a flat with me.”

Eight years. Sherlock decides he can blame the way he just blurted out that offer on the eight years of time he’s spent apart from any version of John, going over and over the details of all their previous meetings, the subtle hints and clues John had given him. The incomplete picture they painted.

“Sorry, but how could you possibly know I’m after a flat?”

“Mike brought you here to meet me because I told him this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. You’ve just returned from military service, no doubt looking for a more permanent residence than whatever hovel they’ve placed you in. We both may not know exactly who you are to me, but flatmates seems like a good start. It would make sense, from what I do know of you.”

“And what’s that? How did you know about Afghanistan?”

A lot of his knowledge about John has come from Mycroft (such as the fact that John had been invalided home from Afghanistan rather than Iraq or somewhere else) and from John’s frequent visits to him in the past, but he’s still made deductions today to fill the gaps. He also picked up on things he didn’t even mention to John, such as the occupation John has been pursuing since he can’t be a doctor now (low-paid technician jobs – dull), the reason for the termination of his most recent employment, and (disappointingly) that John has a date tonight.

He could run through all his lines of deduction, but he isn’t going to do that yet. He knows exactly what to say here; he’s waited for this moment to echo the words John has stubbornly repeated to him so many times before when Sherlock has asked for details about the future.

Sherlock leans in to murmur in John’s ear: “Now, that would be telling.”

The door to the lab opens and Sherlock realises just how close together they’re standing. Too close for prospective flatmates, too close even for good friends. Which they’re not.

As he told John, they’re not anything yet.

“Oh God,” comes the frantic voice, “I’m so sorry- oh God, I didn’t mean to- I’m sorry.”

Sherlock groans softly. It’s Molly.

He looks over to where she’s dithering on the doorstep, the mug of coffee in her hand likely to be spilled all down herself if she whirls around and scurries off the way he can see she’s dying to.

Her eyes are darting between them, mouth open in disbelief. Sherlock corrects his earlier thought: he and John are standing too close for prospective flatmates or good friends because they’re standing as close as lovers might.

It could make her less amenable to him, but he hopes the sight of them together puts a stop to her infatuation, her awkward flirtation and her attempts to make herself attractive to him.

She’s wrong in thinking he hasn’t noticed her, of course he has. He notices everything.

Sherlock’s eyes run carefully, almost languidly over John’s features. A well-remembered, but ever-changing face: the same kind eyes with the underlying steel, the firm jawline (always, always set as if in some sort of grim determination). Same nose, mouth, ears. Symmetrical, for the most part.

John’s face is as perfectly ordinary as it is remarkable.

It’s not entirely Molly’s fault, Sherlock thinks charitably. It’s just a fact of life that no one has ever held his attention the way John Watson does.

“Ah, Molly,” he says, acknowledging her presence so she can’t slip away as if no one had seen her.

John cringes at the words and steps back, obviously also aware that their previous positions relative to each other were overly familiar to say the least.

“Your coffee,” she whispers, making the bare minimum of steps required to reach one of the desks so she can set the mug down and then hasten from the room again, leaving both men staring after her.

“She’s in love with you,” John observes a moment after the door closes.

“Very astute.”

John tilts his head to one side to consider him. “But you feel nothing for her?”

“I…” Sherlock struggles to find the words. Another person might say ‘I’m taken’, but as far as Sherlock is concerned, that phrase it trite, and while it may be true, it’s far from accurate.

He ends up saying: “She’s not the one I want.”

John’s eyes are bright, that particular intelligence he has for people and feelings that Sherlock doesn’t possess anywhere near as much of fairly shines from him, and Sherlock fears he’s given himself away for a moment.

Then John huffs a laugh. “I know that feeling,” he says, and brings a hand down on Sherlock’s shoulder as if they were the oldest of chums.

Sherlock’s smile is strained as he replies: “Indeed.”

An awkward pause follows, broken by John clapping his hands together. “So, this flat…”

Back on solid ground, Sherlock sighs in relief. He can talk about the flat.

“A nice little place in central London I’ve got my eye on. Don’t worry about how we’ll be able to afford it; I know you’re not working currently. The landlady is going to give me a discount anyway-” Sherlock stops, frowning as he thinks about something. “Do you enjoy the violin?”

“Sorry?” John looks baffled by the non-sequitur.

“I play the violin, particularly when I’m thinking, and sometimes I don’t speak for days on end. I hope that wouldn’t bother you too much. Potential flatmates really should know the worst about each other.”

John laughs. “I don’t have a job, and I time travel when I get over-emotional or stressed. Sometimes when I don’t, too. You really think playing the violin and not talking makes you the bad flatmate here?”

Sherlock thinks about the fridge-freezer he intends to install in 221B Baker Street so that he can use it to store the (highly illegal) samples he takes from Bart’s morgue.

“Definitely.”

  
  
\----  


“Okay, you’ve got questions,” Sherlock says as they sit awkwardly (on John’s part, anyway, Sherlock has been looking at his phone and texting – answering four messages from Lestrade that he’d ignored since meeting John) in the cab on the way to Baker Street.

John squares his shoulders against the seat, sits up straighter. “Yeah, how do you know me?”

“We met in the grounds of my childhood home when I was six years old. You knew enough about me that I believed you when you said you were from the future. After that, you visited me several times at various ages, right up until I was at university. I last saw you when I was twenty-one, and you told me we’d meet in the present in eight years time. And now here you are.”

“So everything you said about me at Bart’s, a future version of me told you all that?”

Sherlock smirks. John would like that – Sherlock’s brilliant deductions reduced to nothing more than something he’d already been informed of.

“You barely told me anything in our acquaintance,” he says. “I figured things out each time I met you, of course, but even if I hadn’t, I could still observe all the necessary facts on meeting you today.”

He steers John through his deductions – the tan line, haircut and stance that said served in the military; John’s first comment to Stamford leading him to army doctor; the nature of John’s limp that could only be psychosomatic, thus requiring him to have a therapist; the phone’s engraving and scratches around the charging port that pointed to an estranged, alcoholic brother with marital troubles.

John looks enthralled throughout and Sherlock, prideful creature that he is, has to hold back a smile.

“That was…” John trails off, shaking his head. “I mean, wow, that was really something.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course it was, it was amazing! I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Sherlock blinks a few times and looks back out the window, away from John’s admiring expression. It’s too much, it’s been _eight years_ and he’s forgotten how good it feels to have John’s attention, his praise.

“That’s not what people normally-”

“Hang on,” John cuts him off, brow furrowed. “How did you know it was Afghanistan? I might have served in Iraq.”

There’s a momentary lurch in Sherlock’s chest. He can’t say that he tasked his brother with finding John. Even with his lack of care for social niceties, he knows that it would be considered weird and obsessive.

“A lucky guess,” he lies smoothly. “You were right – I do guess from time to time.”

John huffs a laugh, apparently appeased by that, and Baker Street comes into view as the cab turns a corner.

Sherlock is all but vibrating with excitement as he bounds out of the cab and knocks on the front door sharply, turning and throwing money at the cabbie when he remembers.

Behind him, John carefully eases himself out of the car, wincing as he puts his cane out ahead to steady himself.

Sherlock glowers, hating the metal stick already. He reassures himself that John will be rid of it soon. He’s never seen John with a cane or much of a limp and he knows John didn’t meet _him_ as a child before _he_ met John as an adult, so that would suggest that he must be the one to fix it. Danger and adrenaline will do it. He’ll bring the battlefield back into John’s life and, as ever, John will more than exceed to the challenge.

The door to number 221 opens to reveal Mrs Hudson, who instantly opens her arms to him.

“Sherlock,” she says, a fond sort of grumble as he leans down to embrace her. “And is this your young man?”

Sherlock steps back, watching John’s imitation of a goldfish at her phrasing with amusement, and holds out an arm as he introduces John: “Mrs Hudson, Doctor John Watson.”

They’re going to get on famously, Sherlock can see it already as they greet each other. Her overwhelming need to mother will extend from him to his new (new?) friend and flatmate, especially once she learns he was injured in the war.

“Come in,” she says, and Sherlock jogs up the stairs ahead.

“Don’t mind if we do.”

He stands still at the top outside the door to 221B, waiting for John to pick his way up the steps. There’s a faint look of shame in his eyes when he sees Sherlock has paused with a hand on the door and a raised eyebrow at the limp he’s already labelled as fake, all in John’s head.

Sherlock opens the door and feels a light tremor in his chest as he takes in the sitting room. This one, he thinks, it has to be this one. John has to love it, he just has to. Sherlock can’t picture them anywhere else. It’s sentimental of him, he knows that, but he’s irrevocably attached to 221B Baker Street already. The first time he walked in he just _knew_ it was a place he and John could share. He was prepared to move in alone and wait, but John has arrived at precisely the right time. Like he always does.

It’s still odd, to have John beside him like this. Not from the future, another place and time, not about to disappear at a moment’s notice. He can scarcely believe it. John really didn’t lie to him, all those years ago.

“Oh, this could be very nice,” John says, and Sherlock’s head turns towards him at once as he steps inside the flat and looks around. “Very nice, indeed.”

Sherlock looks around too, smiling and indulging the fancy that says he and John are looking at the room through the same eyes and thinking the same thing: _home_.

“Yes,” he says, pleased that John likes it, _relieved_ that John likes it. “Yes, I really think so, I think you’ll like it here.”

“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleaned out,” John says, as Sherlock says at the same time: “So I went straight ahead and moved in.”

“Oh,” they each say when they realise.

“So this is all…” John breaks off awkwardly as Sherlock whirls around the flat, moving books and files, making a feeble attempt at tidying.

“Well, obviously I can straighten things up…” Sherlock says, flustered and almost stammering. Why is he flustered because of the mess? He’s reminded of John’s second visit to his room at university, the one he prepared and cleaned up for specifically, knowing it was to be their last meeting for some time. He takes a sheaf of unopened letters across to the mantelpiece and stabs a knife through them to keep them in place. “…a bit.”

John points to the mantelpiece with his cane. “That’s a skull.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, glancing at it. It would probably scare John off if he labelled it as a ‘friend’, so he doesn’t. Best to keep some things back. They’ve only just met.

Mrs Hudson bustles into the room then, already doing a better job of tidying as she picks up a dirty cup and saucer on her way. “What do you think then, Doctor Watson?”

Sherlock begins to take off his coat and scarf to occupy himself. This is getting ridiculous; he’s like his teenage self again, desperate to impress John and to not earn his disapproval. He’s above this now. He should be above this now.

“There’s another bedroom upstairs,” she continues, “If you’ll be needing two bedrooms.”

Sherlock is proud of the way his hands don’t falter as he strips off his coat, even as his ears strain to pick up John’s response to her loaded question. Dotty old bat, he thinks. Although he can understand her assumption. Sherlock has shown no interest in any living soul in all the time he’s known her, now he’s suddenly brought a strange man home. A man he must look abnormally attentive to.

 _Can she tell?_ Sherlock wonders. She’s a perceptive old girl, far cleverer than that dotty old bat surface would suggest. Braver too.

She catches Sherlock’s eye and winks. Oh, she knows.

“Of course we’ll be needing two,” John says, confused and indignant.

Mrs Hudson looks back to John then, luckily. It means she misses Sherlock’s blink that lasts a second too long to be anything other than a sign of his disappointment – not so much in John’s answer, but in his dismissive tone.

It’s irrational to be disappointed. This John doesn’t know him, not like the John he’s familiar with. This John doesn’t care for him, or know how much Sherlock cares for him in return. He mustn’t get mixed up like this. The Work comes first for him now, it needs to stay that way. He can’t afford to get distracted.

“Oh, you boys don’t have to hide it from me. I can see Sherlock’s fond of you.”

Sherlock glares at her, teeth gritted, but she’s babbling something about the men next door and heading off towards the kitchen. Sherlock saw them once – gay, committed, irrelevant. Not obviously a threat, or Mycroft would have prevented him moving in to Baker Street. The whole street’s background checks must have been flawless.

“Sherlock,” comes a despairing voice. “The mess you’ve made!”

Sherlock ignores her in favour of observing John. He doesn’t look like that ‘fond’ comment has affected him or his opinion of Sherlock. He probably just let the whole exchange go over his head, dismissing Mrs Hudson as a silly old woman making outdated assumptions about two men living together. As he continues to watch, John plumps a cushion and settles into the armchair opposite the one Sherlock favours. Typical John: his mirror whether he knows it or not.

“We met when you were just six then?” John says, going back to their conversation in the cab. “Christ. And how many times after that?”

“I kept a journal,” Sherlock walks over to one of the boxes he hasn’t unpacked yet, taking a leather-bound book from inside it. “You gave me a list of dates so I’d know where to meet you, when to bring clothes.”

He hands the book to John who sets his cane at his side to take it with a mild expression of suppressed curiosity.

It’s a tense moment, watching John flip through this record of his early life. He hasn’t ever written what happened or any embarrassing (and disturbing, at that age) feelings in the journal, it’s not a _diary_ , but his measurements are all in there. John’s height and weight are normal variables to take down, he thinks, but the others – the number of freckles on John’s back, the number of lines around his eyes when he smiles, the length of his smile, resting heart rate, handspan – perhaps they reveal more about _him_ than they do about John.

It was silly of him to write them down in the first place. He should have encoded them, or scored them out before letting John see the book. He keeps all the measurements in his head anyway with all his other data about John, all the unquantifiable things like the sound of his surprised laugh, the texture of the different colour tones in his hair, the softness and warmth of his mouth…

“More than I expected,” John says abruptly.

Sherlock swallows, realising that John is referring to the volume of visits in the journal and not echoing the thought chasing itself around Sherlock’s mind. _More than I expected._ “Yes.”

“You must know me well,” John says without looking up, still occasionally turning pages. “It must be hard for you now when I don’t know you at all.”

It is, of course it is, but he can’t let it show. He needs to regain control of himself, for God’s sake. “As I said, you told me very little over the years. I don’t know you as well as you might think.”

“Still, you’re used to me, and I’m not the same. I’m practically a stranger.”

Sherlock’s fingers flex at his sides when John looks up at him with that same open, expressive face he’s so familiar with.

“There are similarities.” He’s practically itching to take out his phone, pick something up. Anything he could use as a barrier between them and the honesty John is demanding.

“Are you sure you want me to move in?”

“Certain. You told me we’d be flatmates, so it hardly matters anyway. That’s what happens.”

John frowns, thumb and forefinger releasing the page he’d been holding, half-turned. “That implies a lack of free will.”

Free will again. The thing John had tried so hard to give him an illusion of with his careful silences, his cut-off sentences. He needn’t have bothered. This was always going to happen; they were always going to meet. It’s happening, it’s happened, and it will happen the same way, every single time.

If Sherlock cared much for romance, he might say there was something poetic about that. As it is, he just tends towards determinism since meeting John and simply accepts it for what it is.

“You still believe in free will?”

“I’d like to, yeah.”

Sherlock shrugs. “Exercise it then. Do you want to move in or not?”

His traitorous heart races as he waits for John’s decision.

“I can’t afford to,” John says eventually. “I don’t have a job.”

“I know. Can’t be a doctor if you’re going to disappear in the middle of an appointment, or in the middle of open-heart surgery. That’s not what I asked; I said do you _want_ to move in?”

John meets his gaze steadily and inclines his head, just a little. “Yes,” he says.

It’s music to Sherlock’s ears, his heart rate slowing again. John wants to stay. “Why?”

John looks taken aback at the question. His eyebrows lower as he thinks about it. “It’s a nice place,” he says.

Is that it? John likes the flat? He’d been hoping for a reason involving himself, but perhaps that was too much to ask at this early stage.

“And you’re interesting,” John continues. “I don’t think I’d get bored here.”

Sherlock smiles. “No, you never will.”

His smile is reflected back at him, spreading hesitantly across John’s face. “But I’d need a job.”

“Boring,” Sherlock sighs, managing to flop with no small amount of elegance into the chair opposite John, tired of looming over him now he knows John wants to live with him at Baker Street.

“I doubt consulting detectives get paid enough to cover the rent for a nice place in central London by themselves.”

“I told you Mrs Hudson was offering me a discount, she owes me a favour. A few years back, her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

John’s eyebrows rise. “You stopped her husband being executed?”

The grin Sherlock flashes him shows a wide array of his teeth. “Oh no, I ensured it.”

John shakes his head, clearly stifling a laugh. He always did enjoy black humour, Sherlock remembers. He lets his own laugh escape and John lets out a snort then too.

“You’ll find a job,” Sherlock says when their mirth settles. “Annoyingly. In the meantime, I assure you I’ve no lack of private clients, often willing to pay exorbitant sums of money to find out if their spouses are cheating. Their cases are hardly worth getting out of bed for, but they are a source of income, should it become necessary.”

“I can’t live here off money you’ve earned without contributing,” John says, clearly affronted at the very idea.

“Assist me on my cases then.” Sherlock leans forward in his chair intently and watches John’s reaction to the offer.

He’d always hoped for this, ever since he first deduced that John was a doctor when he had fledgling dreams of being a detective who was able to pick and choose his own cases. Now that he consults for New Scotland Yard mainly, a medical man would prove invaluable to him when Anderson was being difficult or just plain incompetent and obstructive as usual. He’d brushed off many an insult from that loathsome little man with the mere thought of it sustaining him: _John would see the things you’re missing._

There’s a small, unacknowledged part of him that was also sustained by the thought of John accompanying him to crime scenes because it would mean rubbing him in their faces, showing him off. Assistant, friend, and (one day, possibly, if he hasn’t read everything wrong) lover.

John would be the one thing they all thought he could never have: a lasting relationship with another human being. Granted, he’s never _wanted_ that with any other human being, but John’s always been the exception.

“I’m no detective,” John says.

“But you’re a doctor. Are you any good?”

John bristles at the question and draws himself up slightly in the chair, “Very good,” he assures.

Sherlock smirks. A self-confident John is his favourite kind of John. “So you’ll have seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths. Bit of trouble too, I bet.”

He sees the apprehension dawn in John’s eyes before they shutter somewhat, guarded, as he quietly answers: “Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much.”

He says that, but Sherlock saw anticipation flicker along with the apprehension. He _knows_ John, even if he’s not sussed out everything about him yet. “Want to see some more?”

John’s mouth is tight, his jaw firm. His expression looks more like a smile to Sherlock than John’s actual smile, at least in this context. He relaxes, knowing what John’s answer will be.

“Oh God, yes.”

  
  


* * *

  
  
_29 th January 2010 (John is 32)_

John looks around the bedsit, even more starkly empty now he’s packed his meagre belongings into two bags, the only important items in them being his laptop, and the Browning L9A1 that he _really_ isn’t meant to have.

His phone buzzes in the pocket of his jeans, bringing him out of his navel-gazing, and he drops one of the bags to take it out and read the message. It buzzes again as he unlocks it and finds two texts, one from Sherlock, and one from Miranda.

Thumb hovering over the inbox indecisively, he taps to read Sherlock’s first.

_Avoid black cars on your way back. Cabs fine – SH_

John stares at the cryptic message, wondering again if he’s doing the right thing moving in with such an eccentric man. His other option is to stay here though – grey, simple, small. He doesn’t want this life; he wants the hints that Sherlock has offered, crime scenes and detective stories. He’s always had a weak spot for detective stories.

It’ll be hell on his condition, by the sounds of it. His therapist would not approve of John putting himself in stressful situations, especially if she knew the effect they had on him. A time travelling former soldier with probable PTSD, she’d have a bloody field day.

He told Ella that nothing happens to him, but since he was invalided home, since he was discharged from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, quite a few unusual things have happened to him. The first time it happened, he had been sitting at his new desk, new laptop open and all but grinding his teeth as he tried to think of something to write for this _damn_ project Ella gave him that wouldn’t lead to him being sectioned.

 _‘Nothing’_ was a better blog entry than _‘when I was shot I woke up bleeding on an old man’s carpet in a house a million miles away from Afghanistan and I have no idea how.’_

 _‘Nothing’_ was certainly better than that. As he had sat there frustrated though, a pins and needles feeling began in his left hand and he frowned, remembering a similar feeling overriding even the pain of his shoulder as he lay on the warm sand in Afghanistan thinking _‘please God, let me live.’_

After he came back to England, when he had _plenty_ of time to think about it all in the hospital, he put the tingling down to nerve damage. The bullet struck him close to his brachial plexus, after all. But there was no lasting sensory or motor loss in his arm or hand, just a tremor that didn’t even have a physiological basis.

His elbow wasn’t leaning against anything as he sat at the computer this time; there was no compression of his ulnar nerve.

Before he had time to think about it further, he wasn’t in his room any longer. He was outside Bart’s Hospital, staggering to one side to be violently sick over what was apparently one of the ambulance bays. Once he emptied the contents of his stomach, he realised that he was stark naked in a hospital car park. He was tempted to label it as a dream (although his dreams tended more towards showing up naked in lectures at university rather than outside one of the hospitals he trained in) when a cyclist rushed past him, almost knocking him down.

The cyclist didn’t look back, and John watched the cyclist actually go on to knock _another_ man down a few yards away from him. John started running as soon as he saw the man’s head hit the ground, forgetting his bizarre circumstances, his churning stomach and even his nudity as his medical instincts took over.

When he reached the man, he took in the man’s black jacket, a detached thought floating through his head ( _that’s just like my jacket_ ) even as he recognised the man’s face as his own.

He was looking down at himself.

It had to be a dream. The tingling started up in his left hand again and then he was back in his room, lying on the floor by the bed, still naked, with the clothes he had been wearing sat crumpled on the desk chair he previously occupied.

He had to admit: unless he had started sleep-stripping, that hadn’t been a dream.

It happened twice more after that. The second time, John found himself spending ten minutes hiding behind a headstone in an unfamiliar graveyard, certain no relatives of his could be buried there. The third time, he visited an empty meadow for two hours, ducking for cover behind a tree when he heard a boy’s voice calling out in the distance, asking for his ‘croft’, whatever that might be.

He only really got the idea that it might be time travel after he was visited by an older version of himself. That future-John came to him a week ago and told him to be patient because something good was coming his way. John had scoffed, turned over in bed, and told the apparition to fuck off.

The other John had done just that, but not before walking across to the present-John and kicking him in the shin.

“I’m real,” he said. “I’m you in the future, so I’m perfectly qualified to tell you this: don’t be an idiot.”

And then he’d dissolved before John’s very eyes. That was when John started googling time travel.

Nothing like it had ever happened before Afghanistan, before his shoulder. John looks at it like epilepsy: the tingling in his left hand and the panicky rising sensation of queasiness he gets before a jump are like an aura before a grand mal seizure. He wonders if the trauma of getting shot shook something loose in his brain. He had to smile when he first thought about it and remembered that the _temporal_ lobe is the most epileptogenic region of the brain.

He still wonders sometimes if he shouldn’t tell someone, see a doctor. But he _is_ a doctor, and he knows no one can help him. This isn’t a condition out of a medical textbook. This is something hush-hush, something to do with the government, maybe. He dematerialised in front of his fellow soldiers after being shot, just faded out of their view for a while before coming back just as suddenly. But none of them ever said anything; it didn’t go into any reports. John was invalided home as if it hadn’t happened, as if all that _had_ happened was a bullet passing through his shoulder.

The only thing out of the ordinary was the man in the suit who spoke to him in the field hospital in Camp Bastion. John remembers his oily politician’s voice well, the upper-class English accent that spoke in riddles to John as he lay feverish and barely recovering, only half hearing the man, let alone understanding. The phrase he remembers best was something about ‘the necessity of discretion’. John remembers the scent of the man’s cologne better, his creaseless suit, and the umbrella he carried that was beyond out of place in a desert country.

There was definitely some sort of cover-up, but John doesn’t care as long as he’s left alone now. He won’t ever tell a doctor because he won’t let himself be experimented on. He knows he would be.

John shakes his head and opens the text from Miranda. Shit, he’d forgotten about her.

_We still on for tonight? Xx_

The date had been looked on favourably by Ella. An attempt at normalcy, engaging with the world again, adjusting to civilian life.

John doesn’t want to go. Sure, he’d like to have sex again at some point, seeing as it’s been slow-going since he returned from Afghanistan with a fucked-up shoulder, leg and life, but the idea of sitting through an evening of conversation isn’t the most appealing prospect. Not when he knows it’s never going to go anywhere. She’d probably run a mile if he started in on his wacky time travel and conspiracy theories.

More than anything, he wants to settle in at Baker Street. He wants to put his sheets on the bed in that upstairs room, put his laptop on the desk, his gun in the drawer. He wants to hear more about what a future version of him and a past version of Sherlock actually did together during all those meetings. He couldn’t tell from the journal, the entries were just dates and observations about him, albeit pretty weird ones at times. Number of teeth, really? He can tell from the chemistry equipment taking up half the kitchen that Sherlock is a man of science, but the measurements and data in the journal are random and idiosyncratic. Sherlock seems odd, but not random, and John wants to ask what it all means.

He wants to hear more about Sherlock’s previous cases, his methods of deduction. He wants to ask about what he’s working on currently. He just wants to know more about Sherlock.

It’s crazy, he met the man this morning and he’s near obsessed with him already.

John feels an uncomfortable squirming sensation in his stomach as he thinks it. _Obsessed._ It’s not the right word, it’s not like that. He’s not gay. Sherlock is interesting, not attractive. That’s all. He’s just… interesting.

_Hi M. Yeah, we’re still on. Meeting at seven, right?_

The reply is almost instant. _Yep. Looking forward to it! Xx_

There’ll be time to ask Sherlock questions after his date, he thinks, and hauls his bags out of the room, shutting the door behind him without looking back.


	2. First meeting, two

_10 th July 1987 (John is 36, Sherlock is 6)_

The first difference is the sun beating down on him from on high as he lies in the long grass. High enough to probably be midday sun, in fact. It was almost mid _night_ when he left London, when he left Sherlock sleeping soundly – the familiar, even breathing to his right, a steady resting heartbeat beneath his hand, dark curls flattened on one side against the pillow – a welcome change from Sherlock’s usual case-related insomnia. John hadn’t let the stress of their latest case catch up with him until after Sherlock had drifted off, a release of bottled-up anxiety that had him disappearing from their bed and their timeline.

He hopes Sherlock slept through it.

He hopes to be back before Sherlock can wake and realise he’s missing.

The sunshine is warm against his bare skin, and John takes a moment to bask, stretching his arms up and curling his toes. Since he started travelling, he’s become adept at telling the time without a watch and the month without a calendar, and it’s always nice to arrive in Sherlock’s wildflower meadow in summer. As he sits up, he takes in the sea of green, white, yellow and purple. He smiles and closes his eyes, inhaling the multitude of sweet scents, listening to the low drone of bees flitting between the brightly coloured flowers. He’s passed many an hour here with Sherlock picking out the various flora and fauna, giving them their Latin names and looking to John for approval (readily given, as always).

Besides the weather and the surroundings, the other benefit of travelling here in the middle of summer is that Sherlock is hopefully around and not at school. Waiting for him to arrive home _from_ school was fine up until he went away to Eton when he was thirteen. After that, John had to rely on Sherlock being able to get back to Hindhead during term time to see him on the dates he’d dictated to Sherlock at some point, the ones written in his careful child’s handwriting on the first two pages of the leather-bound journal John knows so well. He didn’t condone the truancy, but he could never stop Sherlock when he’d made up his mind about something, and if the journal specified the meadow as the meeting place and not Eton, then Sherlock would be coming home even if it meant sneaking out and acquiring transport. The resourcefulness Sherlock has isn’t something he learned in adulthood.

John stands up and looks around. No sign of Sherlock or the basket of clothes that usually rests against the largest sycamore tree at the east-facing edge of the meadow. He sighs, wondering how long he’ll have to wait this time, and then he hears the distinctive snap of a twig behind him.

Sherlock has told him many times that Mycroft never comes out to the meadow (“it’s _my_ place, John.”), but he’s still wary enough to duck back down into the relative cover offered by the tall grass and flowers. It would be pretty fucking awful to have Mycroft stumbling upon him out here, naked as the day he was born. Mycroft certainly wouldn’t be as accommodating as Sherlock, if the word ‘accommodating’ can ever be applied to Sherlock. If anything, Mycroft would probably have him arrested for trespassing and indecent exposure. Mycroft in the _present_ wants to have him arrested for those things.

“Oh, you’ve heard me now,” the high, clear voice of a child calls out to him. “Don’t keep pretending you haven’t, Mycroft. What are you doing out here?”

It’s Sherlock, of course. Hiding in the trees that make up the borders of the meadow, the woodland boundary between the field and the gardens of the main house.

“It’s not Mycroft,” John calls back. “It’s me. It’s John.”

“Am I meant to know who that is?”

The little boy in shorts and a plain blue t-shirt who steps out from the trees with arms folded across his chest in defiance looks impossibly young and John realises that this must be Sherlock’s first time meeting him.

“You wouldn’t know me if we haven’t met before,” John says. Looking down at himself, he’s suddenly grateful that he went back to sitting down in the grass. “I don’t suppose you have a-”

The end of John’s question dies on his lips. There’s no reason for Sherlock to have _anything_ with him that John could possibly cover himself with. Well, that’s embarrassing.

“Have a what?” Sherlock asks, curious despite himself. “Who are you?”

“I’m John, like I said. I’m a time traveller, Sherlock. We’re…” John hesitates and winces as he does – Sherlock will jump on that pause, no doubt. “You and me are best friends in the future.”

“You and I,” Sherlock says at once. John has to laugh at having his grammar corrected by a child who can’t be more than six years old, and he really has to giggle at the fact that the child is _Sherlock_ who still does the same at age thirty-two. “And you’re lying. Time travel isn’t real.”

Sherlock, despite his narrowed eyes and the certainty in his words, is walking further into the clearing towards him. Did no one teach him not to talk to strangers?

“Oh really? Then how do I know that you have a big brother named Mycroft, and your grandmother likes you to call her _grand-mére_ because she’s French?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Maybe you’re Mycroft’s friend.”

“Definitely not.” John pulls a face and Sherlock smiles before quickly exchanging it for a scowl. John’s heart seems to thud with unbearable fondness for a few beats. Jabs at Mycroft are _always_ the best way to bond with Sherlock. “Okay then,” John continues, “how do I know that your favourite flower in this meadow _full_ of flowers is the bee orchid?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows draw together. “I never told anyone that.”

“I know.”

“And you said we’re best friends?” Sherlock asks sceptically.

“Yep. So I know all about you, because best friends tell each other everything.”

That last statement could not be further from the truth. One hundred per cent honesty isn’t feasible in any relationship, let alone one that involves Sherlock Holmes.

“What’s the name of my school, then?”

John smiles. He knew Sherlock would want to test him. “You go to St. Edmunds, but you’re not boarding there.”

“And why am I not boarding?”

“Because…” John trails off, trying to think of a tactful way to put it. “Because you don’t get on all that well with the other boys. Particularly Harvey Barrington-Smith,” he adds. The name-dropping will lend more credibility to what he’s saying – Sherlock never told anyone but him about the bullying.

Sherlock’s school days are not something he’ll go on to remember with affection. Even when he wasn’t actively bullied he was always ostracised from his peers for his above-average intellect and far below-average social skills. He did himself no favours, of course. Like the time he burnt sulphur in a science class and a few of his classmates had to go to the nurse with breathing difficulties. When he told John about it during a visit, Sherlock claimed that the sulphur wasn’t properly labelled and he was merely trying to conduct a _boring_ flame test on calcium, but John knows better. Sherlock was too good a chemist at age eleven to mistake yellow sulphur for silvery calcium.

There’s a frown on Sherlock’s face and John can tell he’s torn. On the one hand, he’s six years old and he _wants_ to believe in fantastic things like time travel when the evidence is put in front of him like John is doing now. On the other, he’s an exceptionally gifted six year old who decried the existence of both Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy the instant they were proposed to him.

John knows it will take him disappearing before Sherlock’s very eyes to convince him that John might be telling the truth. He’d know that even if Sherlock himself hadn’t told him so.

Sherlock is walking towards him again, coming into the meadow fully now. His frown deepens when he gets close enough to see John properly.

“Why don’t you have any clothes on?” he asks.

John draws his knees up to his chest and hugs them. “When I time travel, I only get to take my body. If I could take my clothes, I’d take anything that was touching me, which wouldn’t be good because then I might leave something from the future in the past. Don’t you think it would be bad if I took a-” John thinks for a moment about an era-specific object that Sherlock would know. He had been going to say ‘laptop’ as an example, but Sherlock would just look at him blankly. “-a car back to the time when they were just inventing the wheel? Or if I was touching a person, I could leave them in a time they’re not from. This way, that can’t happen.”

He’s had this discussion with the adult version of Sherlock a few times, even though Sherlock petulantly hates the logistics of John’s peculiar talent. John had thought that Sherlock would be fascinated by it and wouldn’t tire of trying to sort through all the ins and outs of time travel and, while that’s true of him as a child, in their present he’s just frustrated by the constant paradoxes and the lack of logic to it.

For instance, John never has and probably never will visit the Victorians, or the Romans. He’s never travelled back before his own birth and he isn’t sure how far forward he’s travelled, or even _if_ he’s travelled forward at all. He only knows he’s travelled back in time because, since meeting Sherlock, he always meets younger versions of him. On the occasions when he travelled before meeting Sherlock, he was never able to work out what the date was before he returned to the present. God knows where it was that he went when he was shot, he can barely remember that time anyway.

John always tends to explain this all away by saying that Sherlock is like some sort of a temporal magnet for him, but that only ever gets a derisive snort from Sherlock in the present. John understands the mockery; there’s no scientific reason that he should be so drawn to places where Sherlock has been – the meadow, Eton, Cambridge. But there’s no reason that John should be time travelling in the first place. Sometimes, there are things that just defy explanation.

“Like us,” Sherlock will say when he’s in a relatively good mood.

“Like us,” John will agree.

John shakes off the thoughts and turns his mind back to the time he _is_ inhabiting. Six year old Sherlock is considering John’s answer.

“I guess that makes sense,” he says at last, when he decides he’s considered for long enough. “But this could still all be a dream. Or a trick of Mycroft’s.”

“I thought you were going to say that. So here’s the solution: I’m going to come back here in nine days on the nineteenth of July, and I’ll be younger than I am now, so I won’t remember meeting you today. Before I do come back though, your mother’s maid is going to resign and leave the house. I couldn’t know that if I’m not from the future, so if she’s still here when you see me again, then you’ll know I’m a liar.”

Sherlock squints at him, obviously trying to work through all of that. “Ellen would never leave,” he says and he doesn’t sound sure, as if he doesn’t think he’ll be proved wrong (and nor should he, Ellen _was_ perfectly happy in her job before she learned that her father was sick and moved back to Chester to be closer to him), but he doesn’t want John to be proved wrong either.

“We’ll see then, won’t we? The nineteenth, Sherlock, don’t forget. And if you could bring some of your dad’s clothes out for me on that day, that would be great.”

“I can do that, but I want something in return.”

John laughs at how typically _Sherlock_ that is, and that’s when a faint tingle begins in his left hand.

“What do you want?”

Sherlock looks down and shuffles his feet. “Can I take some measurements when you come back to see if you’re really different? Like your height and weight.”

At this point, he’s quite used to Sherlock’s attempts to explain and quantify him. Height and weight are perhaps the most normal ways of Sherlock trying to wrap his scientific brain around him before Sherlock will branch out into more arbitrary things.

“That’s fine with me,” he says. “Now, if you need any further proof that I’m telling you the truth, then watch this.”

Sherlock looks at him piercingly. “Nothing’s happening,” he says after thirty seconds of silent, focused observation. Sherlock isn’t patient at any age, it seems.

“Keep watching.”

He’s developing the familiar rising sensation to accompany the tingling. It won’t be long.

“I _am_ watching.”

“Keep-”

And with that, John disappears from the meadow, leaving an astonished Sherlock in his wake.

  


* * *

  
  
_30th January 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 32)_

On their first official day as flatmates, John comes back mid-afternoon, clearly after having sex the night before (same clothes he left in, never came _home_ last night after his date, grinning like the proverbial cat with a canary), and declares himself absolutely knackered when he walks in before going up to his room for a nap.

Sherlock ensconces himself in his own bedroom, slamming the door because he can and then playing the violin loudly to help him think. It just so happens that it might also prevent John from sleeping.

It’s petty, he knows. It’s completely juvenile, but he warned John about this. He’s not an easy man to live with at the best of times. There is no knock at the door or a yelling voice asking him to stop though. Sherlock has no idea what that means.

He stops thinking about whatever woman John was with last night (blonde, curvaceous, stupid, polite, and undoubtedly Sherlock’s opposite in every other possible way) around three o’clock, transitioning from some frenzied Paganini into a Bach Partita as he thinks about the three recent serial suicides. One more and he’ll step in beyond his mass texts to show up the Met in front of the media. Lestrade _is_ wrong, but that’s his default state half the time.

At around five, when it starts to get dark, he ventures cautiously into the living room to find John sat on the sofa, bent over the paper spread out on his lap, pen in hand. Sherlock falters for a moment before he gets close enough to read the words upside-down. John is circling potential jobs, not flats. Tedious, but bearable.

John looks up at his arrival, a broad smile on his face. He drops his pen into the fold of the newspaper and claps slowly, still beaming. “Wow,” he says. “That was some performance this afternoon. You didn’t include the fact that you were _good_ when you listed playing the violin as one of your off-putting attributes as a flatmate.”

 _And you didn’t include philandering,_ Sherlock thinks. Somewhat harshly, he supposes. If Mycroft could see him now, he’d be smirking like he was in a room filled with desserts, the greedy bastard. It’s only a matter of time before the inevitable visit, but if Mycroft wants to give out lectures about envy and lust, he’d better prepare for a very barbed one in return about gluttony and sloth. Pride can of course be ascribed to them both in more than healthy measures, so whatever lectures may pass between them, not a single word shall be heeded nor any behaviours altered.

The Holmes brothers’ enduring stalemate.

 _Bloody Mycroft_ , Sherlock thinks hatefully.

“Thank you,” he replies when he remembers his manners and John’s admiring expression. That look is a far better thing to dwell on than thoughts of his brother. Compliments are useless in the scheme of things, really, but there’s that troublesome pride of his again. He can feel the tips of his ears turning just slightly pink with pleasure. Ridiculous.

He hears the car pull up outside before he sees the flashing lights. Red and blue – police. He gravitates towards the window, instantly intent on what might be happening. Lestrade gets out of the car as he watches through the curtain.

“There’s been a fourth,” Sherlock says, more to himself that to John, whom he has quite forgotten about (who is watching his sudden change in demeanour with baffled interest). “Something different this time…”

“A fourth? Sorry, what?”

Lestrade bounds up the stairs, two at a time, and enters the room. He looks worse than he did at the press conference. Tired and stressed. Two pounds dropped since Sherlock last saw him, perhaps three.

“Where?” he asks immediately, not giving Lestrade a chance to speak.

“Brixton, Lauriston Gardens.”

“What’s new about this one?” he presses. “You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something different.”

John is looking between them, confused. Sherlock doesn’t have time to bring him up to speed just yet, and he won’t be distracted from this. Ordinary brains, honestly, how do they function?

“You know how they never leave notes?” Lestrade inclines his head. “This one did.”

Oh, that _is_ interesting. That’s very interesting. He needs to see that note for himself, but who’s going to butcher the evidence with their ineptitude today? He’s already got his assistant primed and ready at the very least if it’s as bad as he fears. “Who’s on forensics?”

“It’s Anderson.”

It’s as bad as he fears. It can’t get any worse, in fact. He grimaces just hearing the name. “Anderson won’t work with me.”

“Well, he won’t be your assistant!”

“I _need_ an assistant,” Sherlock insists, and then pointedly looks at John who is looking (gaping) currently at Lestrade. “And I’ve got one right here. John?”

John blinks and turns his head. “Sorry, but _what?_ ”

“Crime scene,” Sherlock almost taps his foot in impatience at having to explain himself. “Are you coming? Violent death, the kind of thing we talked about yesterday.”

Lestrade is now looking between the two of them much the same way John had been doing with him and Lestrade a moment ago. “Hang on, John? Not _the_ John Watson, surely?”

 _The_ John Watson? Really, Lestrade is going to bring this up now?

“Oh, please,” Sherlock says. “There’s a crime scene to get to before Anderson can irrevocably damage it, do you really want to waste time on introductions? Detective Inspector Lestrade, Doctor John Watson. John, Lestrade. Are we done here?”

“What do you mean, _the_ John Watson?” is John’s painfully predictable next question.

“This can wait until _later_ ,” Sherlock says, glaring daggers at Lestrade for even daring to open his mouth about this.

Lestrade must read the danger signs in his expression because he backs off considerably, hands up in surrender. “All right. So you’ll come?”

“Not in a police car, I’ll be right behind.”

 _Perhaps I should get used to saying ‘we’ now,_ he thinks when Lestrade leaves with a nod and a thank you.

He waits a few seconds before he lets his excitement show through, pivoting on the spot, fists raised and shaking as he leaps through the air. “Brilliant!”

Four serial suicides and now a note. John by his side and Anderson is going to be there to see it. It’s _Christmas_.

He just doesn’t say the part about John aloud.

  


* * *

  
  
_19 th July 1987 (John is 35, Sherlock is 6)_

“Oh, it’s you again.”

John isn’t quite expecting that one. The little boy sat in the grass – cross-legged, overlarge book balanced on his knees – looks to be about the youngest he’s seen Sherlock. Which leads him to the conclusion that an older version of himself must have visited before this. Fucking time travel.

Sherlock is... Sherlock is almost cute at this age, John has to admit. Pale, slightly chubby limbs poke out of his polo shirt and khaki shorts. His untamed curls are just this side of too-long and frame his pale, slightly chubby face.

He’s _almost_ cute. There’s that familiar cold stare fixed on his features. John shivers at the sight of it, wondering if there was any age at which Sherlock didn’t have that look. He must have been the world’s most disconcerting baby.

Actually, that title probably went to Mycroft. He suspects the elder Holmes brother’s first word must have been something demanding and/or horrifying. He already knows Sherlock’s first word was ‘Mycroft’ when he was just ten months old, which is possibly the _least_ horrifying thing about Sherlock in general. Mycroft had seemed amused to tell that tale, but doggedly refused to emulate the lisp Sherlock must have had, the one John has heard himself at various points. There’s just no way Sherlock pronounced an ‘r’ sound correctly at that age, however remarkable he might be.

John sits up, slightly wobbly from his jump in time still. “Hello, Sherlock.”

“John,” is the wary answer. Too wary. This Sherlock hasn't met him many times.

“I don’t suppose-”

John is cut off by Sherlock pointing at a wicker basket by the tree, immersed in his book again. Clothes. Brilliant. He flashes Sherlock a quick grin, but he’s almost worried: just how young _did_ he get to Sherlock with that list of dates of when he was going to show up naked in his back garden? Sherlock always told him they first met when he was six.

In the basket he finds a smart shirt and trousers. Better fit than he’s used to. Sherlock’s father’s, perhaps, going by the year he’s estimated it to be. Mr Holmes isn’t as broad as Mycroft, making his wardrobe the superior option for John, but there are no clothes belonging to him left in the house after 1988, so over the years John has invariably been swamped in shirts that are too big or left holding up his trousers if Sherlock deletes the fact that he needs a belt.

When he's dressed, he turns back to Sherlock. “What are you, five? Six?”

He always tries the year younger than the one he truly thinks it is first – he knows it pisses Sherlock off.

Sure enough, it earns him a glare. John tries and fails to hide his smile.

“Six and a _half_ ,” Sherlock says.

John drops his smile and nods solemnly to show he understands the importance of the half. “I see, yes, my mistake.”

Sherlock seems appeased by that. That’s the Sherlock he knows; he does so love people acknowledging their own stupidity.

“How long’s it been since I last saw you?”

“Nine days,” Sherlock answers promptly. “Just like you said it would be. I wonder if that means you’re real or not then. You coming back, I mean. I’ve no use for an imaginary friend.”

John smiles again and shakes his head. Six and a half, bloody hell. His grasp of language alone marks him as extraordinary.

“I’m real,” John promises. “What did I tell you before?”

“You said mummy’s maid would quit and she did. You also said you knew me in the future and we were best friends there. I don’t have friends.”

John can’t help but wince at that turn of phrase. Still hurts, just a bit. It reminds him of how painfully _young_ Sherlock is too, for all that he can talk like an adult. “Well, you have me.”

Sherlock merely gives him that unnerving stare. John knows he’s being scanned in the same way older-Sherlock would, only this Sherlock doesn’t quite have the same breadth of knowledge and experience to be able to make any full deductions on him.

“Last time,” Sherlock says, “you said that you wouldn’t remember our meeting when you came back because you’d be younger. You do look different. Do you mind if I take some measurements? You told me that you wouldn’t.”

“Do what you like.”

He was expecting this. He’s never been overly fussed by his height or weight or all the other variables Sherlock has wanted to measure over the years. He’s never been the type to be self-conscious, even before the army knocked all such compunctions out of him.

He spies the scales behind Sherlock, a tape measure coiled neatly on top next to two pencils. Sherlock produces a notebook, apparently from within the pages of whatever massive chemistry textbook he’s been reading and takes down John’s weight from the scales after they manage to find a roughly flat bit of land to put them on.

Next, Sherlock gets John to lie down in the grass, marks out two lines with the pencils – placing one at the top of his head, one at his heels – and then makes John get up to hold the tape measure at one pencil while he darts across to the other to check the distance.

Using his marker and the tape measure, John reads off: “One hundred and sixty-nine centimetres. Or five feet, _six_ _and a half_ inches.” He does _know_ his own height and, unlike his weight, it doesn't change, but the joke gets him a shy, hard-won smile, and John feels absurdly pleased.

“Sherlock!” a female voice calls from off in the distance. It’s Sherlock’s mother.

Sherlock glowers and then looks apologetically at John. “I have to go,” he says. “Will you just… disappear if I’m not around?”

“No," John replies with a gentle smile, "I’ll be here for a little while yet, probably, until it’s time for me to go back to see you in the future again.”

“Will you be coming back here?”

John nods. He’s memorised the list from Sherlock’s journal, so he knows that if this is their second meeting, their next meeting will be when Sherlock is seven.

“Do you have a list of all the dates when I come to see you?” he asks.

Sherlock shakes his head, but he looks like he’s trying _not_ to look too thrilled at John’s words. “You’ll be back a lot? Tell me when.”

“I’ll give the list to you when I come back sometime,” John promises, “but you won’t see me for a little while now, not until next year.”

Sherlock’s face falls and John feels _awful_. A year is a long time to a child.

“Why not-”

 _"Sherlock!"_ The shout is louder this time, more insistent.

“I really have to go.” Sherlock says, his shoulders slumping, mouth a displeased downward curve.

“I know, but I’ll see you soon. Just you wait and see.”

The waiting, however much he wants to spare Sherlock the pain of it, is unavoidable for them both. This is just the hand they’ve been dealt, John thinks as he watches Sherlock run back across the meadow towards the house. He looks back once, just to see whether John has disappeared, probably. John waves to him with a grin.

When he loses sight of Sherlock, John flops down into the grass to begin his own wait until he finds himself back with Sherlock at Baker Street where he belongs.

  


* * *

  
  
_30th January 2010 (John is 32, Sherlock is 29)_

John gets into the black car because he’s pissed off. After a quiet cab ride with Sherlock to a crime scene, the man seemed more concerned with scoring points off the lead forensic officer and the sharp-tongued DS than he was about the pink woman’s untimely death. He was fantastic, of course, all his observations and deductions were just beyond brilliant.

Then he left John behind.

He said he wanted John to assist him. How can he do that if Sherlock swans off without him?

At least the aforementioned sharp-tongued DS was willing to tell him where to get a cab. She was more than willing to tell him all about Sherlock being a psychopath and likely candidate for a serial killer.

John can’t see it. Yes, Sherlock is evidently very, very strange. He’s somewhat callous, speaking of fun with a woman lying dead at their feet, swooping around in a giddy haze of excitement at the end there when he realised… whatever it was that he realised about pink, John couldn’t follow.

Sherlock has got issues with his priorities, certainly. And he’s a bastard for leaving John behind when they arrived in a cab together.

He’s not a psychopath though. It’s clear that Sherlock feels affection for the kindly old landlady in Baker Street and, if John isn’t mistaken, for him as well. They have a history together, he just isn’t privy to it. He doesn’t know Sherlock yet, not properly, but he can tell already that he’s something of an anomaly for Sherlock. Ditching him at a crime scene aside, Sherlock seems to want to keep him around for some reason.

And John wants to stick around, but right now? He’s pissed off, and he’s on edge because he’s just answered a payphone in a phonebox and found he was the intended recipient. The intended target. He’s been threatened by an oddly familiar voice, but it’s more of an act of defiance than surrender when he climbs awkwardly into the car that pulls up alongside the phonebox.

Sherlock told him yesterday to avoid black cars but he never said why, so John’s going to get in and he’s going to _find out_ why.

The end of the journey finds him in an abandoned warehouse, of all places. It’s awfully unoriginal, the perfect location for a clandestine meeting. He’s almost glad to be out of the car though after the stony, condescending silence from the stunning girl who calls herself Anthea and types faster on her phone than he could ever hope to.

As he exits the car, planting his feet and cane on the slippery floor, he gets his first look at the man he’s been brought to like a lamb to slaughter.

He recognises him.

“Have a seat, John.”

That same posh voice, that same posh suit. The very same out-of-place umbrella that the man now gestures at a chair with. It’s the government man from the field hospital in Camp Bastion.

“It’s you,” John says, for lack of anything better or less cliché to say.

“Indeed,” the man shifts his grip on the umbrella, bows his head slightly. “I wondered if you’d remember, you were on a rather high dose of-”

“Who are you?”

The man looks taken aback at being interrupted mid-sentence before his composure returns in a split-second. “Merely an interested party. The leg must be hurting you, sit down.”

John clenches his fingers tighter around the handle of his cane. “I don’t want to sit down. Interested in what?”

“In you,” the man says smoothly, as though this were a perfectly normal thing to say, “and your connection to Sherlock Holmes.”

“I don’t have one.” He can hardly say that he’s a time traveller who has apparently visited Sherlock several times in the past now, can he? Even if he didn’t deeply, instinctively distrust this man already. “I barely know him, I met him…” John pauses and thinks about it. Christ, has he really only known Sherlock one day? “…yesterday.”

He’s done for, isn’t he?

The man makes a ‘hmm’ noise. Thoughtful? Amused? Knowing? John can’t get a read on him. “And since yesterday you’ve moved in with him and now you’re solving crimes together. All very cosy and domestic. All very unlike Sherlock.”

“What can I say? I must be special.”

The man smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes, I know about your condition, Doctor Watson.”

A text alert breaks the tense silence as John stares at the man, wondering what he can possibly say back. ‘What condition?’ maybe? Pleading ignorance seems like his best bet, even if he doubts it will get him far.

He pulls out the phone and reads the message. It’s Sherlock.

_Baker Street._

_Come at once if convenient._

_SH_

Convenient is not the word he would use for this situation.

“Don’t worry,” the man continues as John looks at the phone screen. “I assure you that your secret is quite safe with me. But you ought to know that I’m aware of your habit of jumping through timelines to places you have no business being.”

John puts his phone away and looks up at the man again, his previous bland, pleasant smile replaced by a sternly furrowed brow.

“How?” he asks.

“I have ways and means. Now, I also happen to know you’ve moved into…” The man reaches into his inner jacket pocket, drawing out a slim black notebook. He opens it to a seemingly random page and peers at it. “…Two hundred and twenty-one _bee_ Baker Street without a job or any financial means to support you. I’d be happy to pay you an obscenely large amount of money to move out. I can even establish you in a much _nicer_ flat, one without experiments all over the place and violins at all hours.”

 _One without Sherlock._ It shouldn’t be unthinkable already, but it is.

“I could probably even organise a suitable job for you, one where they won’t mind or question the odd disappearance or two.”

“No.”

The man smiles, mouth closed and pinched. “I see. Another offer then: what about a meaningful sum of money on a regular basis while you live at Baker Street to pay your way?”

“In exchange for?”

“A journal. Perhaps you’ve seen it already, it’s a large book, leather-bound-”

“No.”

He’s talking about Sherlock’s journal with the dates of John’s visits to him. Not going to happen. Esoteric entries or not, it’s still Sherlock’s journal and thus private. Besides, there’s no way John’s going to steal it from under his nose to give to this man he knows nothing about. This man who wants it for God knows what.

There’s no way he _could_ steal it from under Sherlock’s nose anyway, he’d know straight away from a bit of dust on John’s collar or something.

The man taps the point of his umbrella against the floor twice, nodding. “Fascinating. Truly. A final offer, then. I could pay you for information. Nothing indiscreet, nothing you’d feel uncomfortable with. Just tell me what he’s up to.”

“Why?”

“I worry about him,” the man’s voice creaks with false sincerity. “ _Constantly._ ”

“And you want to pay me to move out. What are you, a jealous ex?”

The man’s mouth twitches with distaste. “Nothing like that, I can assure you. But we do have what you might call a… difficult relationship. So if you take me up on my offer, I would naturally like you to keep that between us.”

John’s phone chimes again.

Sherlock again.

_If inconvenient, come anyway._

_SH_

Another text follows it:

_He’s got to you, hasn’t he?_

_Don’t listen to a word he says._

_SH_

John smiles and puts the phone back into his pocket. “No,” he says.

“I haven’t mentioned a figure-”

“Don’t bother.”

John won’t spy on Sherlock. He won’t spy _on_ or _for_ anyone.

The man laughs, a brief, hollow thing. “I see. Soldiers are famed for their loyalty, are they not? Sherlock would approve of such a quality in the company he keeps.”

“It’s not that. I’m just not interested.”

The man says nothing for a short period, watching John closely. Then he takes out the notebook again, gesturing to a page. “‘Trust issues’ it says here.”

John frowns and swallows hard. He recognises that phrase. He read it upside down less than a week ago in his therapist’s office, that round, youthful handwriting.

“Can it be that you’ve decided to trust Sherlock Holmes of all people?”

He doesn’t, not yet. But he trusts him a damn sight more than he does this slick, patronising man. There were so many entries in that journal of Sherlock’s. He’s going to come to know Sherlock Holmes, in the present and the past because there’s _something_ that ties them together. Something that apparently drags him through time to where Sherlock is. He trusts in that.

“We’re done here,” he says.

He turns to walk away but the man calls out to him. “You think stress is a factor in your time travelling, don’t you? You think it’s a bizarre manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder. I can tell from your left hand that stress might be a factor, but not that particular kind.”

John stops dead, turning back to face him. “My what?”

“Show me,” the man says, nodding at him.

The man is calm, he’s in his element as he leans nonchalantly onto his umbrella, a blunt counterpoint to John leaning heavily on his cane, his feet planted firm and steady against the ground as he jerks up his left hand, holding it by his face with a challenge in his eyes.

He’s waiting for the man to come to him. The man obliges, reaching out for John’s hand with his own.

“Don’t,” John says, pulling away.

Mockery is laced all through the man’s response to that: the tilt of his head, his raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

John lowers his hand, lets the man take it and examine it with his own long fingers.

“Remarkable. Did you know you have an intermittent tremor of your left hand, Doctor Watson?”

Despite himself, John nods. And it’s always his left hand that tingles in warning before he travels. The tremor is just another reason he can’t go back into medicine. A doctor needs to have steady hands. God, he wishes this man would _stop_ using his title.

“Your therapist thinks it’s caused by post-traumatic stress disorder. Your tremor, not the time travel. You haven’t told her about that, of course. She thinks you’re haunted by memories of your military service.”

John holds himself taut as he listens, jaw tight and a muscle jumping there, his eyes fixed ahead and not meeting the man’s knowing stare. “Who the hell _are_ you?” he finally has to ask, letting some of his anger show through. “How could you know that?”

“You ought to fire her,” the man says, voice low and convincing. “She’s completely incompetent if she's got you this wrong. You’re under stress right now and your hand is perfectly steady. You’re not travelling. You see, you’re not haunted by your memories of the war, Doctor Watson. You’ve been missing the danger and the excitement. Between Sherlock and the time travel though... I'd say you have it back.”

The man walks away, twirling his umbrella in a circle around his arm as he goes. “We’ll be seeing each other again very soon, John.”

John watches him go for a moment, trying to process the events of the meeting, and hears his phone chime in his pocket.

Yet another text from Sherlock.

_Escape by distracting him with the promise of sweets._

_Then come to Baker Street._

_Could be dangerous._

_SH_

John laughs at the very idea of plying that man with sweets, putting his phone away and then stretching his left hand out in front of himself. He looks down on it with satisfaction. Completely still, no tremor.


	3. Life Lessons

_4 th May 1992 (Sherlock is 11, John is 38)_

John looks sad today. Sherlock has a hard time comprehending the emotions of most people, but he can read them easily enough. John is especially easy to read, with his expressive, open face. He’s honest from his skin right down to his bones, despite outwardly being the most secretive conversation partner Sherlock has ever had to deal with.

The grief isn’t just obvious from John’s face – there’s the slow, resigned way he pulls on the shirt Sherlock has left in the basket for him, the minor exacerbation of his limp, the missing extra pounds around his middle that Sherlock is used to seeing on younger versions of him.

John’s movements suggest he is tired. Tired the way Mummy is always tired these days.

When he gets over the initial disorientation of his jump though, John smiles like seeing Sherlock is the greatest gift in the world, like there’s nowhere else he would rather be. Sherlock supposes the meadow is quite lovely in late spring, but he can certainly think of many places he would rather be. In general, that is. Not when John is around, because that’s different.

When John is around, there’s nowhere Sherlock would rather be either. He doesn’t know what that means yet, but he thinks about it sometimes. He mainly thinks about it at school when he’s bored out of his skull, looking around at the other boys with a smirk because he knows something they don’t. He _has_ something they don’t.

The dewy grass is cold against his legs as Sherlock sits and continues to read his book while John dresses behind a tree. He’s always so private. Honestly, it’s not like Sherlock hasn’t seen him naked before. John is oddly prudish about certain things.

Sherlock turns a page in his book, snapping the paper taut as he does. The sound carries across the meadow.

“Give me a minute, Sherlock,” John’s voice rings out. “It’s called patience.”

Sherlock huffs – right again. John is a master in his ability to interpret almost all of Sherlock’s non-verbal cues, never failing when Sherlock tests him. It’s annoying.

Mycroft’s shirt and trousers are as comically oversized as ever on John when he pops his head round the tree with a grin that’s a few millimetres too wide to be real. Sherlock measured John’s smile when he was seven, no need to do it again. Height will be the same, but he expects weight is going to be down this time. It’s a pity he neglected to bring the scales in his agitation over bringing the book.

“Done,” John declares.

“Good,” Sherlock replies, not looking up from his reading.

“Someone’s in a mood.”

John sits down heavily beside him, the flowers around them swaying in the displaced air the movement creates. Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock watches John stare out ahead, obviously not wanting to interrupt Sherlock when he’s this focused on something. Sherlock envies him for the way he can sit there, so quiet and serene with his own thoughts the way Sherlock never is.

Eventually though, John peers over Sherlock’s arm when he becomes curious to see which book it is today that’s monopolising his attention. Sherlock watches John’s eyebrows rise.

“A romance novel?” John asks, plucking the book out of Sherlock’s hands. An unexpected move, Sherlock doesn’t have time to tighten his grip to stop him. “Who are you and what have you done with Sherlock Holmes?”

Sherlock grits his teeth and snatches it back. “It’s research.”

He hunches his shoulders and John nudges one with his own, clearly attempting to get back into his good graces. It won’t work – Sherlock doesn’t appreciate being teased.

“Okay, calm down. What kind of research?”

Sherlock hesitates. He brought the book out here with the _intention_ of having John ask him about it, because he wants to ask John questions in return. He does _want_ to learn, but the thought of admitting to a lack of knowledge in this area is just awful. It’s better to admit it to John than it would be to his classmates though.

“At school,” he says slowly, “this book was being passed around.”

John nods and makes a circular ‘go on’ gesture with his hand.

It really is awful to try and ask this. The whole thing is worse than he imagined because it’s embarrassing too, for some reason. Sherlock feels warm blood suffusing his face – an involuntary physiological reaction. A blush. He’s not done that in front of John before. He frowns as he thinks about it. He’s not blushed in front of _anyone_ , really. It’s a useless reaction to have in this circumstance, what purpose does it serve but to alert others to weakness?

Sherlock turns his face away.

“Let me guess,” John says, when it becomes clear that Sherlock isn’t going to explain. “It’s confusing to you. You don’t understand the characters’ actions. Right?”

Without turning back to meet John’s eyes again, Sherlock nods.

He liberated the book from William Powell’s P.E. bag on Thursday after the idiot went home without his kit. Initially, Sherlock’s plan had been to replace the book on Friday morning before William could retrieve his bag, for the sake of honing his stealth skills rather than from any fear of being identified as the thief. No one would suspect _freaky Sherlock_ of having any interest in such a book.

However, after he finished reading it (on a whim, of course) at around eleven o’clock on Thursday night, his plan changed. He re-read it on Friday evening, highlighted key phrases, and set it aside to bring out to his meeting with John on Saturday.

“You’re what, ten or eleven?” John says. “Sherlock, don’t worry about it. These things will come naturally when you’re older, or- or maybe they won’t. Which is still fine.”

John’s face is slightly red when Sherlock looks at him again. This must embarrass him too.

“The other boys are confused by it themselves,” John continues. “That’s why they’re so interested in it right now. When I was about your age, I remember going out with Tania Fairweather, and we kissed once on the lips. The next day she came into school crying that she was pregnant.”

John laughs at the memory, but Sherlock doesn’t laugh with him. He scowls instead, feeling a strange animosity towards Tania Fairweather. Probably because her anatomy knowledge at Sherlock’s age was _appalling_ compared with his. Sherlock knows how babies are made, thank you very much, Mycroft.

“I understand the basic biology, John.”

He sees John stifle another laugh at his petulant tone and narrows his eyes further. John’s age and experience also make him a very condescending conversation partner, in addition to his dreadful evasiveness.

“So,” John says, “tell me what the problem is.”

“It’s not the characters’ actions so much as their… motives.”

John smiles, three millimetres short of happy. Fond, then.

“That’s what I mean when I say that you’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Sherlock says, stomach churning at the mere thought of feeling anything that remotely resembles the… the _urges_ he’d read about in the book. The lack of control the characters had over them was alarming.

He can’t imagine ever feeling that way about girls. Attending a boys’ school means he hasn’t had much contact with the so-called ‘fairer sex’, but if they’re anything like his female cousins (shrill, aggravating, overly concerned with the colour pink) then he wants nothing to do with them.

At present, he finds boys and girls equally bothersome. He likes books and science and solitude. And John. He likes John more than any of those other things.

The skin around John’s eyes crinkles with his smile – definitely fond. “It’s fine if you don’t, Sherlock. Remember this, because it’s important: if you feel something, or if you don’t feel something, that’s _fine_. Nothing is really normal or abnormal.”

Sherlock scoffs at him. ‘Normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are societal constructs he doesn’t care for and John knows it. Particularly ‘normal’.

“You must know,” he says. “You can tell me. When I get older, do I turn into them?” Sherlock indicates the book and the characters, pointing (unintentionally and somewhat unfortunately) at the word ‘clitoris’.

John clears his throat, embarrassed again. “That would be telling, Sherlock.”

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30 th January 2010 (John is 32, Sherlock is 29)_

John has been kidnapped by a man who knows he can time travel, he’s sent a text to a murderer, and now he’s in a restaurant with Sherlock waiting for said murderer to show up.

There is a candle on the table to make it more ‘romantic’.

John has never had a stranger evening in his entire life, and that is saying something.

The street outside is quiet, but Sherlock’s attention is fixed on it, waiting for the moment anything suspicious should occur. There’s a sort of tension laced throughout his body, like he’s poised, like he’ll be ready at a moment’s notice to spring out of his chair and give chase. John recognises the tension – he was the same in Afghanistan. Sherlock really is like him in this regard, John thinks, but his battlefield has more glass and concrete, less sand and heat.

“So, who was he?” John asks.

Sherlock had said it could be a long wait. Might as well at least _try_ and get some answers.

After a moment, Sherlock’s head swivels towards him, away from Northumberland Street. “I’m sorry?”

“The man I met this evening, the one who tried to pay me off.”

Sherlock had labelled him earlier as ‘the most dangerous man you’ll ever meet’. It was hardly comforting, and it wasn’t enough of an answer to satisfy John.

Sherlock huffs in irritation, and looks back out the window. “He’s my older brother, Mycroft.”

John, who had been taking a sip of water, almost chokes at that. “He’s your _brother_.”

“Yes, I believe that’s what I just said.” Sherlock glares at him.

“And he wants to bribe your new flatmate either into moving out, stealing from you, or spying on you?”

Sherlock’s head whips round again. “Stealing from me? You never mentioned that. What did he want?”

Before John can answer, Sherlock is speaking again. “Oh, the journal, of course. He’s been dying to get his hands on that for years.”

“I refused,” John says. “I wouldn’t steal from you.”

“I know that. I expect you’re wondering why my brother would want you to?”

John nods. He mainly wants to know what sort of man goes around kidnapping people in the name of extracting information from them about his sibling’s movements.

“Simple jealousy,” Sherlock says with a sneer. “Growing up, he thought some of the hero-worship he was due as my older brother was displaced from him to you. He’s always seen you as something of an interloper. Since he started to actually believe you were real, that is.”

John leans forward across the table slightly, intent to find out more about his history, his _future_ with Sherlock. “So I was like an older brother to you?”

Sherlock grimaces at the insinuation, for whatever reason. John tries not to be upset by it. He always wanted to be an older brother. He felt like one, most days, what with Harry being the way she was.

“Not exactly,” Sherlock says at length and John can tell he’s skirting around something, he just can’t tell what. “But Mycroft still views you as a threat. To him and to me. Did he give you that line about constantly worrying about me?”

“Yeah. Why am I a threat to you?”

If anything, he reckons Sherlock is a threat to _him_ , to his mental health and physical well-being no doubt.

Sherlock blinks, his expression closes off and he looks away. “How am I to know what goes through his twisted brain? He isn’t to be trusted. There’s that saying about not trusting someone farther than you can throw them, isn’t there? It applies here, considering the job I’d have throwing Mycroft more than a nanometre at his current weight.”

John is silent for a moment, considering the depth of resentment in Sherlock’s tone. Harry is hardly his best friend, but John can’t fathom having the sort of relationship with her that Sherlock has with his own brother. The man is more like an enemy to him than anything, the way Sherlock talks.

From what he’s seen so far, Sherlock’s other relationships with people amount to: a superficial acquaintance with and tolerance for Stamford, indifference towards the infatuated girl who brought him coffee in the lab, some measure of affection for his landlady, mutual hatred for Anderson the forensic officer and DS Donovan, and some complicated symbiotic thing with DI Lestrade providing him cases and Sherlock providing solutions in return.

“Do you trust anyone?” John asks.

Sherlock looks at him evenly, focus pulled off the street and back to John. “I trust you.”

“Oh.” John tries to parse that, feeling a heavy burden settle on his shoulders. He barely knows Sherlock; he hasn’t earned the man’s trust yet. “In the past,” he begins carefully, licking his lips. “What did we do together? I doubt I helped you with your homework.”

He’s done calculations based on the years of the entries he read in the journal. The earliest was dated 1987, when Sherlock could only have been six years old. The more he sees of this prickly, brilliant adult Sherlock, the more he wants to see him in his formative years. Knobbly-kneed and permanently scowling, perhaps. John smiles at the mental image.

Sherlock is clearly thinking about his answer, the street behind him forgotten for a moment. “We talked,” he says eventually. “You answered my questions.”

“What about?”

“People,” Sherlock shrugs, and once again John gets the idea that there’s something he’s not saying. “Human interaction. You didn’t need to help me with my homework, you’re quite right, but you still taught me things about life. In some ways, you helped shape the person I am today.”

John laughs. “Oh, don’t put that on me!”

There’s a brief flicker of something like hurt in Sherlock’s eyes before he looks away again, saying nothing.

John replays his last sentence in his head, and cringes when he thinks back on one of Sherlock’s from earlier: _I trust you._

He’s not doing a good job of earning it, really, is he?

“Sorry,” he says. “There’s- there’s nothing _wrong_ with the person you are today, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did,” Sherlock says, bland and toneless. “It’s all right, most people feel the same.”

“No, they don’t, I’m sure there’s someone, a friend, or a girlfriend maybe-”

“Girlfriend?” Sherlock cuts him off dismissively, looking at him with a sort of terrible intensity in his gaze that makes John want to squirm in his seat. “No, not really my area.”

John feels his face begin to turn red as he realises the implication, as he realises his mistake. “Or- or a boyfriend?”

Sherlock’s sharp stare doesn’t change as he gives a small shake of his head. “No.”

“Right,” John gives a short, awkward laugh, trying to dispel some of the charged atmosphere that’s built up. “Okay. So you’re unattached, like me. Fine. Good.”

Silence falls, thick and uncomfortable as the seconds tick by.

Sherlock opens his mouth to speak: “John, um… I don’t know how to say this…” just as John also begins to talk too: “You said at Bart’s that the girl, Molly, she wasn’t…”

They both stop, just looking at each other across the table.

Sherlock is the one to continue, visibly steeling himself before he does. “John, I don’t know what you think, and I don’t know how much Mycroft has said to you this evening, but I hope you don’t think that I-”

Oh God, Sherlock must be under the impression he’s being propositioned. And he’s trying to _reject_ him by the sounds of it.

“No,” John says quickly, clearing his throat and then speaking over Sherlock. “No, I’m not _asking_. No.”

“Of course,” Sherlock says at once, turning his attention back to Northumberland Street. “My misapprehension. Won’t happen again.”

After a further moment of uncomfortable silence, Sherlock nods at something outside the window.

“Look across the street. Taxi.”

John turns in his seat to look, easily spotting the taxi idling by the side of the road. He can just about read the number plate from his current position and memorises it.

“Stopped,” Sherlock says. “Nobody getting in, nobody getting out.”

They both watch as the silhouette of the passenger in the back – male, by the look of it – turns his head to look out of both the left and right windows.

“Why a taxi?” Sherlock continues, talking more to himself now than to John. “Oh, that’s clever. Is it clever? _Why_ is it clever?”

“That’s him?”

“Don’t stare,” Sherlock orders.

“You’re staring.”

“We can’t both stare.”

Sherlock gets to his feet, taking his coat and scarf with him as he strides out the door. This was what he was poised for. He’s no longer coiled; it’s his time to strike. Without another thought, John grabs his own jacket and follows.

His cane is left, forgotten in the restaurant.

There’s a mad genius to chase after.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30 th January 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 32)_

It would be the perfect time, Sherlock thinks. Adrenaline coursing through their veins, hearts beating in tandem, both breathing hard to get oxygen back into lungs that burn from the cold London air.

They’re drunk on the moment, giggling with their backs against the wall, leaning towards each other.

It would be the perfect, perfect time to lean further, to press his body against John’s, to press his lips against John’s. They could kiss, right there in the hallway of number 221 where Mrs Hudson could find them at any minute, exasperated but affectionate as she reminded them they had two perfectly good bedrooms upstairs for this sort of thing.

It _would_ be the perfect time, if John had any of the memories and feelings Sherlock wanted him to have. If John hadn’t soundly rejected him at Angelo’s.

He’d been preparing for it, but that didn’t make it any better. When John mentioned Molly, Sherlock thought back to what he had said about her not being the one he wanted and he was _so sure_ that John must be figuring out Sherlock’s feelings and some of the things that happened in the past that he had to go and say it: _I hope you don’t think that I-_

It was a good thing John did interrupt him then, because he’s not sure how he would have finished that sentence.

_I hope you don’t think that I was in love with you._

_I hope you don’t think that I coerced you into moving in with me because I was in love with you._

_I hope you don’t think that I’m in love with you._

Sherlock shakes his head. Present tense. Wrong. That expression in general: _in love with_. Wrong.

It wasn’t that. Surely. He’d know if it were that, wouldn’t he?

He must have known how that sentence would end at the time, or he wouldn’t have begun it. It must have been something sensible, something logical. Not something sentimental, something so banal and obvious.

Eight years is a long time. It’s long enough to grow up and accept that his adolescent infatuation was just that. John had once called it that himself. ‘Infatuation from closeness’ he had called it, speaking of himself like he was a safe adult figure for Sherlock to be attracted to as a teenager. It had infuriated Sherlock at the time, reminding him of insipid girls with crushes on their unattainable teachers. He hated to be likened to them by someone he held in such high regard.

Sherlock forgave him quite soon after he said it though. John redeemed himself well on that day.

The knock at the door comes right on time and it puts an end to Sherlock’s reminiscing.

Sherlock watches, grinning widely as John takes his cane from Angelo and looks back at him with an awestruck expression. At least that’s one thing he’s managed to fix between them tonight.

The front door closes and Sherlock is thinking of what to say next when Mrs Hudson comes out of her flat. Her face is a sight – a mask of unhappiness and anxiety. “Sherlock, what have you done?”

“Mrs Hudson?”

“Upstairs,” she says. It sounds like she’s been crying.

Sherlock runs up the steps, pleased to hear following John behind him, and throws open the door to find Lestrade lounging in his armchair and other police officers milling about the flat, turning it upside down. One of them is just lifting the journal out of one of the boxes.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock demands, stalking across the room and snatching the book from the startled young man who gives it up without a fight. Sherlock rolls his eyes. Amateurs.

Trying not to hug the book protectively against his chest, he tucks it under one arm and turns to Lestrade.

“Something you don’t want us to see?” Lestrade asks, raising an eyebrow and nodding at the journal.

“Something you have no business looking at. Not that it stopped you the first time.”

“Calm down,” Lestrade shrugs, angling his head towards the officer whose hands are still frozen in the same position they were in when Sherlock tore the book from them, “he was the first to touch that. Besides, that’s not what we’re interested in. I knew you’d find the case. I’m not stupid.”

“You can’t just break into my flat,” Sherlock seethes.

Without realising, he clutches the journal a bit tighter. Lestrade’s raised eyebrow makes a reappearance and Sherlock loosens his grip with a scowl.

“And you can’t just withhold evidence! And I didn’t _break_ into your flat.”

“Well what do you call this then?” Sherlock throws up his free hand.

Lestrade looks around, his expression conveying pure innocence. Sherlock knows better. “It’s a drugs bust.”

A small weight makes itself known as it drops through Sherlock’s stomach. He blinks at the feeling, recognising it as being linked with fear. Panic. The cold sensation that’s spreading through him fits too.

John is going to know now. He’s going to find out.

“Seriously?” comes John’s voice from behind him, “ _this_ guy? A junkie? Have you met him?”

Sherlock closes his eyes. So loyal, so trusting. The certainty in John’s voice only makes it worse.

It isn’t the same, he tells himself, John doesn’t know him well enough yet for it to matter. The John from the future, the John he cares about is _this_ John anyway, so he must have already known about the drugs when he was visiting Sherlock.

He already knew, but he never _said_ anything. Why? It would explain a few things, like all the sad, disapproving looks at his arms when John thought he wasn’t watching.

“Haven’t _you_ met him?” Lestrade asks John, amusement in his tone.

Not this again. Sherlock is going to have to kill the man before he gives the whole game away. At this point, he almost wishes Lestrade had just left him for dead when he was high rather than taken care of him for long enough to hear the sort of pathetic, desperate things that must have come out of his mouth regarding John.

“I don’t know what you mean, but I know he isn’t an addict!”

Sherlock turns to look at John, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, stopping when he catches himself doing it. He closes in, moving his body in front of John’s as if to shield him, to stop him talking to Lestrade. “John-”

But John is still going: “I’m pretty sure you could search this flat all day and you wouldn’t find anything you could call recreational!”

_Maybe. Maybe, if they don’t pull up the floorboards, John._

“John, you probably want to shut up now.”

John’s eyes flick from Lestrade to Sherlock. “Yeah, but come on…”

Sherlock gives him a meaningful look. _Yes, there are illegal substances in this flat,_ he tries to communicate through his eyes alone. He can’t say it aloud in front of the police, despite how obvious it must be from his behaviour. Despite Lestrade knowing already.

“No,” John says after what feels like an hour holding his stare.

“What?”

“ _You_.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock snaps at his disbelieving tone. It was all partly John’s fault anyway, so he shouldn’t take that tone with him, even if he is oblivious to the fact.

This was why Mycroft would pay John to move out and be gone from Sherlock’s life for good. This was why Mycroft saw John as a threat – not because he would ever intentionally hurt Sherlock, but because of what his absence could make Sherlock do to himself.

Sherlock didn’t do well when left completely alone with his own mind for eight years, adrift without the anchor he’d had since childhood.

He turns back to Lestrade to avoid saying any of this. “I’m not your sniffer dog.”

And that’s when Anderson comes into the picture, just when Sherlock thought it really couldn’t get any worse.


	4. First kiss, one

_8th August 1999 (John is 37, Sherlock is 18)_

The first thing John notices when he arrives in the meadow is the humidity. It’s hot enough to be summer, which is pleasant when you show up somewhere random without a stitch on. Winter arrivals in the snow and frost are the absolute worst.

The second thing he notices is Sherlock, facing away from him and looking out over the clearing. His stance is familiar: poised with impossible grace, left arm held out and right arm bent as he plays the violin. It’s hard to tell from behind, but judging from his height, Sherlock is probably older than sixteen. When John last saw him at that age, he was going through the tail-end a growth spurt. It looks to be completed now, leaving Sherlock at the height John is used to in the present.

John listens to the melody for a moment before approaching. It’s Bach, if he’s not mistaken. He undoubtedly is.

Sherlock is playing now with the same skill and passion as his older self. No one could hear Sherlock play the violin, no one could _watch_ him play and still label him cold, unfeeling. His head is inclined towards the instrument, and John just knows his eyes are closed, not in concentration, but in the same way one might close their eyes when kissing a lover.

No, he’s not cold or unfeeling at all.

Sherlock is dressed in a similar way to the man John left behind in the present. His pristine white shirt almost glows in the sunlight, the material drawn tight across his back and shifting fluidly on the right as he draws the bow across the strings. His sleeve draws up a little with every movement and exposes the delicate bones in his wrist before covering them again, hiding the vulnerability from view.

As in all things, Sherlock looks glorious.

John walks over to him, appreciating the cool grass under his feet, turning his face up to bask in the warmth that strokes down over him. The wildflowers are in full bloom (bright yellow St John’s wort, pink orchids, violets and pansies) and butterflies are flitting about all around him. To him, the meadow has never looked more beautiful.

He doesn’t want to interrupt Sherlock’s playing, so he comes to stand behind him, his toes resting just on the edge of the small shadow cast by Sherlock in the midday sun. He knows Sherlock has heard him rustling through the grass; he’ll finish the piece and turn to acknowledge him soon.

He’ll grin at John, make a comment about his state of undress, tell him where he’s stashed clothes for him this time while John tries not to blush.

In the Army, John got used to being naked around other men. He was comfortable enough before that from playing rugby at uni, from PE at school. It’s different with Sherlock though, because he’s just a boy now and, even though John can’t help it, it seems somehow depraved to show up naked like this knowing what they’re going to be to each other in the future. Knowing what Sherlock asked of him when he was last here, when Sherlock was just sixteen.

Oh God, John thinks, don’t let him ask again.

Sherlock finishes playing with a little flourish, evidently showing off for his audience, and stoops to lay the violin in the case at his feet.

“John,” he says by way of greeting as he snaps the case shut and straightens up again.

“How long?”

Sherlock turns to face him, there’s a twist of his lips as he considers the question. He’s definitely older than sixteen, he looks closer to eighteen now.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, John realises he is in so much trouble. He sees the warning sign in Sherlock’s eyes: that wicked gleam as he watches John taking him in, taking in his smooth face that’s lost nearly all of its boyish attributes, almost free of the spots and blemishes that had plagued him two years ago. His hair is longer; the curls look smooth, glossy now rather than unfortunately greasy no matter how often he washed them like before. The growth spurt has paradoxically taken away his gangliness. He’s the commanding presence John is used to now, refined grace and understated power. Sherlock may think of his body as transport, but it’s not as if he’s walking ( _striding_ ) around in a broken-down Reliant Robin now, is it?

Annoyingly, Sherlock looks almost the same as he does in John’s present. John can only explain this by imagining a portrait of Sherlock actually growing older and more weathered like he should be, hidden away somewhere in an attic. Or perhaps Mrs Hudson looks after it for him.

John shakes his head to clear it of whimsy and Sherlock smiles, sharp-edged and predatory. He’s not going to make this easy.

“It’s been a year and a few months since we last met. You were thirty-seven then.”

John shakes his head. “No clue, and I’m thirty-seven now. You’re seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Oh, I’m eighteen,” Sherlock answers, and John is not imagining the suggestive tone, the subtle curve to the left side of his mouth, the raised eyebrow. He _isn’t._

When Sherlock takes a step closer, right into his personal space, John has to wonder if this is what hysteria feels like.

“Last time,” Sherlock says, voice pitched deliberately low, “you made love to me right here in this meadow. You were a patient teacher, as always. Shall I show you how much I learnt?”

He strokes a hand down from John’s bare shoulder to his elbow and John lets out a loud, high-pitched giggle at that. Sherlock’s expression instantly drops from seductive into his customary furrowed brow and downturned lips. “What?” he asks, moving back a pace and folding his arms defensively.

“ _Made love to you?_ ” John chokes out through his laughter. “Really, Sherlock? Oh God, did you think I’d fall for that one?”

He giggles helplessly again, bending at the waist and clutching at his stomach.

Sherlock glares at him. “Oh stop it, it was worth a try.”

“Not really. Speaking of: can I have some clothes, please?” He’s starting to feel exposed.

Sherlock waves a hand absently towards the sycamore tree a few feet away. “Basket behind the tree,” he says, and John heads towards it.

“Stop looking at my arse,” he says over his shoulder as he goes.

Disobedient little shit that he is, Sherlock doesn’t stop his blatant staring.

John dresses quickly – one of Mycroft’s old shirts and a pair of trousers that wouldn’t fit him if he ate continuously until he caught up with his own time – behind the tree, out of Sherlock’s line of sight.

He hears the disgusted sound Sherlock makes in his throat at that and smirks.

“I neglected to bring you clothes last time,” Sherlock calls out to him. “An experiment to see if your prolonged nudity might make you more amenable to my suggestions.”

John snorts; he’ll look forward to that one.

“It didn’t, of course,” Sherlock continues. “Am I that unattractive?”

Left leg through the correct hole in the trousers and raising his right leg, John freezes. It’s an act, it must be. Sherlock isn’t insecure about his looks, not even slightly. He doesn’t really care about them, beyond his need to look meticulously put together and permanently unruffled, thank God. John’s not certain he could handle reassuring an eighteen year old Sherlock about how infuriatingly good-looking he’s become after a ropey childhood and the unkindness of puberty, not without humiliating himself beyond measure, anyway.

“To you, I mean. I know I’m considered attractive generally.”

Disobedient, _arrogant_ little shit.

“That would be telling, Sherlock,” he calls back, shoving his other leg into the trousers and zipping them. Good God, there aren’t enough holes in the belt. He can’t understand how Sherlock can call Mycroft fat in the present, he really can’t. Compared to his childhood, he’s positively svelte now.

He comes out from behind the tree, holding up his trousers with one hand and feeling foolish.

Sherlock doesn’t laugh like he usually does; his mouth is occupied in a scowl. John winces.

“Hardly,” Sherlock says, clearly in a huff with him (some things never change). “I’m asking whether you find me attractive now, not in the future. So it wouldn’t be _telling_ at all.”

John sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Sherlock, I’m sure we went over this when you were sixteen, and I probably went over it _again_ with you at seventeen. You are eighteen, and I am thirty-seven, which is more than twice your age. Why do you find _me_ attractive? I’ve got wrinkles. My hair’s going grey!”

There’s a pause as Sherlock frowns and considers his answer. John is grateful for that, he’d half expected Sherlock just to fold his arms and fire back a childish “because I do!”

Sherlock at eighteen is more mature than he gave him credit for. It’s hard to keep track, all these different Sherlocks at different ages. It seems like just last week he was convincing a seven year old Sherlock to smile because it was his birthday and then fighting the awkwardness of him asking if John was married in the future.

Probably because it _was_ just last week for him. Fucking time travel.

“I can’t explain it,” Sherlock says at length, and John knows that must be frustrating as hell for him, to not be able to explain it to John means he can’t even explain it to himself. “There’s just something captivating about you. Your face, your history. I can’t work out everything about you, and it makes me hate you as much as I want you. In a world full of transparent people, you’re opaque. Everyone else I know is dull and flat when I put them next to you.”

That is… well, it’s immensely flattering. Except for the hate bit.

He’s always known Sherlock doesn’t really see lined skin or thinning hair. He sees a person’s story, their actions and motives. Often he just discards most of the information, only keeping the things that are useful as clues or for manipulation.

At thirty, Sherlock told him he’d never deleted a single thing he’d learned about him, that he’d never needed to write down any of the measurements he’d taken over the years because he stored them all in his head. It meant far more than any planned, carefully-worded declaration of love, though John hadn’t taken it for one at the time.

Sherlock is fidgeting with the cuff of one rolled up sleeve, avoiding John’s eyes. His ears are tinged with pink. Probably the beginnings of sunburn rather than embarrassment, the five minutes he’s spent in the sun would be enough to do it.

John wants to give something back to him. He wants to admit something to Sherlock, to tell him just how much he’s going to come to mean to him, but how can he without telling him the future? Things happen the way they happen, the way they’ve already happened. It wouldn’t be fair to Sherlock to let him know about their future. Sherlock needs to make up his own mind as he goes; he deserves that chance, even if fate has always chosen to throw them together.

They’re tangled up in each other, bound as one throughout history, for whatever reason. Finding each other and losing each other and finding each other again. That’s not his fault, he can’t control that. But he can control himself.

“Sherlock,” he begins, shaking his head ruefully, “what you feel, it’s just infatuation from closeness. We’ve known each other a long time and you’re comfortable with me. I’m an adult you’ve grown up with, but I’m not family. I’m not threatening, whereas going out to meet someone your own age must be terrifying.”

Predictably, Sherlock scowls at that. “Not really, and I just said they’re all dull. I don’t want anyone my own age, or of any other age. I just want you. Don’t you want me?”

 _Of course I do,_ he thinks. _Always._

He’s going to have to hurt him today. He’s tried so hard to avoid that.

“It’s not a case of that, Sherlock. Whether I want you or not, you’re eighteen, I’m thirty-seven. I’m old enough to be your father if I’d started very young, which I _did_. I had sex with the first person who paid me a bit of attention. I don’t want that for you.”

“Eighteen is the legal age of consent for homosexual acts and I’m already two years past the other. I’m able to make up my own mind, John. And don’t flatter yourself and insult me by thinking that you’re the only person who’s paid me any attention. I’ve had many offers.”

John can imagine. It’s awful to even contemplate, though he knows it shouldn’t be. “It’ll be sixteen for both soon,” he says, for lack of anything better to say.

“John.”

“Okay, I’ll get to the heart of the matter: I’m not going to have sex with you.”

“Why? Do you only have sex with women?”

John gapes at him, even as he knows he shouldn’t be shocked or offended anymore by Sherlock’s bluntness. “That’s still beside the point!”

“The point being my age. How many times? I’m an _adult_ , John, surely even someone as unobservant as _you_ can see that. Let me make this easier for you.”

And with that, Sherlock drops his hands to his shirt buttons and undoes them all with horrifying efficiency, pulling his shirt up and out of his trousers. He shrugs his shoulders and the material just slides right off him. It hits the ground before John can even make sense of what is happening.

His hands go to his belt next and John reaches out, lightning quick, to stop him. “What are you doing?”

“I should think it would be obvious,” Sherlock says, gesturing at himself as best he can with John’s hands gripping his wrists. The movement causes the backs of John’s fingers to brush over the front of Sherlock’s trousers. John jerks his hands back as if they were burnt.

Sherlock takes advantage of the moment, his newly freed hands pulling open his belt before flicking the button on his trousers and sliding the zipper down.

John immediately slaps his palms over his eyes, as much as a gesture that conveys utter disbelief at the situation as an attempt to preserve Sherlock’s modesty when he seems intent on doing the opposite.

“Oh God, this can’t be happening.”

Uncovering his eyes, he sees a flash of Sherlock’s underwear. Black briefs, as expected, the same as those favoured by his older self. Probably just as expensive and snug too. Oh God, this _is_ happening.

John shuts his eyes and obscures his vision again. “Stop it, Sherlock, come on. This isn’t funny.”

“It’s not meant to be funny.” Uncertainty hovers around the words. “You- you really aren’t attracted to me?”

John hears the buzz of a zipper going back up (that tell-tale pitch change, low to high) and a dry sniff.

He takes his hands away from his eyes and is met with a still-shirtless but thankfully still-trousered Sherlock. Years of experience let John effortlessly read the hurt in his blank expression and rigid posture.

Sherlock doesn’t meet his eyes as he bends down to pull on his shirt, standing to button it, half turned away from John. His hands are shaking, clumsy with shame and haste, as he puts his clothes back on, a stark comparison to the confidence with which he shed them.

“I got it wrong, stupid of me, really. I can’t believe I misread things so spectacularly, I-”

“Hey, hey,” John reaches Sherlock in three strides and, not caring whether his borrowed trousers fall down, lays his palms lightly on Sherlock’s shoulders. “You aren’t stupid. For God’s sake, Sherlock, you’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met.”

Sherlock shakes his head, still evading John’s gaze and looking off to his right. “But I got this wrong, didn’t I? I got it _so_ wrong, and-”

John cuts him off again by moving one hand to catch and tilt Sherlock’s chin until they’re looking at each other again. Sherlock tries to struggle but John keeps his fingers on Sherlock’s jaw, keeps him in place so he can’t look away.

“Let’s sit down and talk,” he says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

Sherlock’s eyes close in resignation, but he complies, lowering himself into the tall grass as John does the same.

“What’s this really about?” John asks carefully after a moment of strained silence.

Sherlock huffs in irritation and John watches as he tears a small chunk of grass out of the ground and shreds it without mercy between his fingers. The gesture is so pointless, so different to his own Sherlock’s controlled, reasoned actions. His age and all issues of taking advantage aside, _this_ is another reason why he could never have sex with Sherlock as he is now. He’s not the same, and he’s definitely not as grown up as he thinks he is.

Sherlock drops the grass and moves so he is half sitting, half lying down, hands propping him up on either side as he reclines, squinting up at the sun.

“I’m going to Cambridge in a month’s time,” he says eventually, “and I’m not going to see you for another two years according to the list. I’m going to be surrounded by even more sex-obsessed idiots than I am now and you won’t do this _one thing_ for me so I know what it’s like.”

“Is that it? You’re worried about your lack of experience?”

It makes sense, actually. Sherlock is, by his very nature, an endlessly curious man, a dedicated scientist, and an ardent collector of data. John can see it now: it must infuriate him to be lacking in this area when it seems like everyone around him understands it perfectly.

Sherlock glowers. “I’m not _worried_ ; I merely hoped that you might fill a gap in my knowledge. Forget I asked, seeing as the very idea sends you into such despair. I’m sure someone else will be willing, even if they are second choice.”

The thought makes John’s skin crawl, the idea of some smarmy Oxbridge tosser like Sebastian Wilkes being the first to kiss Sherlock, the first to touch him and take him to bed. He knows it’s primitive of him, but he can’t help it. If he were less principled, the sheer level of possessiveness and jealousy he feels would compel him to accept all of Sherlock’s propositions, to be all of Sherlock’s firsts.

In the present, Sherlock has never spoken about any past lovers, but when they started having sex he was hardly the innocent virgin. If nothing else, he was far too relaxed about it all for him to be as inexperienced as John had suspected he might be from the way he’d talked beforehand. There must have been _someone,_ presumably at university if not after. He’d even shown a surprising acquaintance with John’s body and his desires, which he’d put down to Sherlock’s observations and deductions at the time and over the years.

“You’ll find someone at university,” he says with a sigh, “someone your own age, your own intelligence, and you’ll wonder why you ever considered me as a possibility, let alone first choice.”

“I’ll never find someone like you.”

It’s delivered in Sherlock’s usual measured, rational tone. It’s not a sentimental declaration but a mere truth that Sherlock has uttered in much the same way as he would any other fact he believed to be indisputable.

Sentiment or no, it makes John feel undeniably warm and he grins like an idiot.

Sherlock turns his head and looks at him through narrowed eyes, distrustful. “Why are you doing that?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re smiling. Stop it, you look manic. Why are you doing it?”

John only grins harder. “Oh it’s just… just _you_.”

Sherlock smiles back at that, a barely perceptible upward tilt to the corners of his mouth. It’s there though, other people might not recognise it for what it is, but John can always find it.

A companionable silence passes, each of them smiling to himself over the other.

“Kiss me,” Sherlock says, all of a sudden.

John doesn’t startle, but it’s a close thing. He opens his mouth to protest, but Sherlock talks over him.

“No, you can’t just outright refuse. I’ve toned down the request so you’d be more comfortable, the least you can do is acknowledge my compromise by obliging me.”

“Oh really?”

They’re both teasing, but John is actually considering it. It couldn’t hurt. To fill this one gap in Sherlock’s knowledge, as he’d asked. But no more; a kiss is one thing and sex is quite another.

Sherlock must read the deliberation in his expression because he cocks an eyebrow at him in challenge, leaning back on his elbows, almost flat against the grass now.

“Just a kiss,” John says. “ _One_ kiss, Sherlock.”

“Fine,” Sherlock huffs and looks down at his own shoulder, picks a thread off his shirt. “Just do it already.”

“I’ll take my time if I want!”

Sherlock catches his gaze, eyes filled with mischief.

“Oh, right, you’d like that,” John says with a laugh.

How to approach this? Sherlock is obviously not about to move, if anything he’s settled more horizontally, no doubt in an attempt to get John on top of him, the bastard.

“Sit up,” he orders.

“No.”

Not entirely unexpected, that.

“It’ll be awkward for me to lean over you. My shoulder will hurt.”

“Your pain tolerance is high, and it doesn’t _have_ to be awkward and therefore painful, not if you don’t actively avoid all other bodily contact with me outside of the kiss.”

This is such a bad idea. John heaves himself up and over Sherlock’s prone body with a gusty, put-upon sigh. Sherlock of course recognises it as false and only smiles sweetly up at him.

John holds himself above Sherlock with his hands braced on either side of Sherlock’s shoulders. The effort isn’t enough to make his shoulder hurt really, but his arms are going to start to tremble soon.

Beneath him, Sherlock is still propping himself up with his elbows. Not looking away from John’s eyes, he very deliberately licks his lips, his pink, pointed tongue darting out to wet his ridiculous cupid’s bow.

“Stop that,” John warns.

In reply, Sherlock half-closes his eyes, eyelashes lowering, and bites delicately into his own bottom lip before releasing it with a smug look.

“Honestly, you are the most spoilt brat-”

John cuts himself off as he lowers his body to Sherlock’s, pushing him down fully into the bed of grass and flowers. Sherlock’s arms come up to his back, hands simply cupping his shoulders rather than pulling him in closer as John had expected.

Their faces are about three inches apart in this position, the greatest distance between any part of their bodies. Sherlock is breathing differently, shallow and quick. His cheeks are faintly rosy and John raises his left hand to each, feels with the backs of his fingers just how warm they are.

Sherlock’s eyes slip closed as John allows himself a final indulgent caress of Sherlock’s face. He takes his hand away and tips his head down to kiss Sherlock, and Sherlock tilts his head up impatiently at the same time and their noses brush. Anticipation buzzes between them as they lay there together, frozen in that minute contact, caught in the moment before their mouths finally meet. Eyes still closed, Sherlock’s lips part, and he releases a small, shuddered breath.

God, John loves these moments.

He angles his head down and to the left, slanting his mouth over Sherlock’s.

He feels Sherlock go tense at once and then relax gradually. John strokes the back of a hand over his cheek again as if in encouragement, Sherlock’s lower lip caught between his. He tugs lightly at it, uses insistent pressure as he kisses it, and Sherlock’s grip on his shoulders becomes more of a frantic clutch.

Damn it, if he’s going to be Sherlock’s first kiss, he’s going to make it a good one.

He pays attention to the top lip next, gently biting and sucking at the pronounced curves and the dip of the bow. He presses his mouth fully to Sherlock’s again after, letting his tongue trace along the seam of Sherlock’s lips, already parted enough for him to slip between.

They spend a long moment that way, mouths fused together, tongues stroking and lips caressing, hands cradling each other’s faces. The pace is lazy, unhurried, and John is just about to change that, lost in the kiss he hadn’t intended to prolong, when Sherlock pulls back abruptly, gasping for air.

“John,” he says, his breathless voice at the lowest pitch that only ever comes out when they-

John realises with a jolt that Sherlock is growing hard against him.

Sherlock is a hormone-riddled teenager, with a man he’s all but professed a great deal of desire for laying on top of him and kissing him; it was to be expected, really. And yet John hadn’t expected or planned for it at all, and he feels like he might be panicking a bit now, especially when something in him is taking this as if it were a normal encounter with the present Sherlock and wants him to respond appropriately. Fortunately, he’s not as young as Sherlock, so he’s just got enough time to try and will the feeling away.

Dead things, John thinks desperately, bodies in the morgue, eyeballs in the microwave, thumbs in the refrigerator. Anderson having sex. Oh, that works.

This was _such_ a bad idea.

John carefully, _carefully_ rolls off Sherlock, which still elicits the most indecent groan he’s ever heard in his life. The sound does not help him in the slightest – undoing the work of his most unpleasant mental images – and nor does the heavy panting as they lie side by side.

“Eighteen,” Sherlock says when he’s got his breath back. “This is absurd, John, I hope you realise.”

John rolls onto his side to look at him, “Sherlock, I-”

He breaks off as the tingling starts in his left hand. Shit.

Sherlock’s keen eyes catch the shift in John’s expression, the clench of his hand against the warning of his imminent departure, of course they do. He flings his forearm dramatically over his face.

“Perfect timing,” he says through gritted teeth, “Really, the best excuse in human history, perhaps, to get out of having sex with someone.”

“I’m sorry,” John says, and he means it, he truly, truly does.

Sherlock moves so that he’s lying on his side too, facing John. “I suppose there’s a certain romance to it,” he says with an exaggerated mock-pout. “Torn apart at the most inopportune moments. Oh John, tell me, how long do we have left?”

He laughs as he says it. Cheeky and carefree.

Jesus, Sherlock at eighteen. He looks almost the same as the Sherlock he’s used to, but he’s infinitely softer around the edges. He takes John’s breath away.

The tingling in his hand continues, a reminder.

“Oh Sherlock, it’s mere seconds,” he replies, playing along.

“Well.” Sherlock edges closer. “Must put them to good use.”

He leans in to kiss John again and ends up kissing thin air as John dematerialises the instant their lips touch.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30 th January 2010 (John is 32, Sherlock is 29)_

Sherlock is gone. He’s left in a cab and gone god knows where, and John is left with Lestrade, wondering what the hell just happened. It’s all making John feel distinctly uneasy. From what he’s seen, Sherlock is the man with a plan – his actions are thought-out, well-reasoned. He wouldn’t just pop out for milk in the middle of a case that he’s been so absorbed in. Something is going on.

“Why did he do that?” Lestrade asks him. “Why did he have to leave?”

“You know him better than I do.”

Lestrade seems to find that amusing. “I’ve known him for five years, and no, I don’t. You’ve known him longer, right?”

It’s starting to add up, all Lestrade’s little comments to him. _The_ John, he said when they first met. “You know who I am, don’t you? What’s he told you about me?”

“Not a lot,” Lestrade assures him, his palms raised to placate. “He was always high at the time, or coming down. He used to mumble things about you. I never believed him, of course, but now here you are. Do you really…” he looks around, but the other officers have all traipsed out, leaving the flat not much more dishevelled than it had been, but lacking whatever order Sherlock had put it into. “Do you really time travel?”

John tenses slightly at the explicit mention of it. He thought Sherlock was the only one who knew, now it seems his brother and a Detective Inspector are in on it too. He’s not sure how he feels about that, but he trusts this man already a lot more than he does Sherlock’s brother, certainly. “Yeah,” he shrugs, aiming for nonchalant. “I haven’t been to Sherlock’s past yet, I only met him for the first time just yesterday. He knows more about me than I do about him.”

Lestrade nods, then whistles through his teeth. “Wow, I can’t imagine what that must be like. I never thought I’d say it, but poor Sherlock.”

John frowns. “Why ‘poor Sherlock’?”

“Well. It’s got to be hard for him, his…” Lestrade waves a hand, an awkward expression settling over his features and twisting his mouth, “…his _whatever_ suddenly not knowing who he is.”

His _whatever_? What does that mean? It definitely sounds like a resolutely straight bloke not being all that comfortable with the word ‘boyfriend’. Or perhaps just not comfortable using it in the context of Sherlock Holmes, of all people.

“Did- did he say we were together, then?”

Surely not. Sherlock would have mentioned that. He wouldn’t have started to turn John down at dinner after he misunderstood him and thought John was propositioning him, would he? No, he’d have been all for the idea.

“From the way he talked, I always thought…” Lestrade trails off, eyebrows lowering as he thinks. “I don’t know what I thought. It’s not like the man has close friends though, you know?”

“It’s not like he has a parade of girlfriends or boyfriends either, from what I can tell.”

Lestrade gives a short laugh, looking up as if remembering something. “You’d be right. Still, the way he talked about you? I’m going to stick with ‘poor Sherlock’. Even if he is a right pain in the arse.”

“So why do you put up with him?”

“Because I need him,” Lestrade says, sighing heavily and looking a lot older and wearier than his age warrants. “Because he needs me too, I think. Well, he needs the cases. It stops his mind tearing itself to pieces and it keeps him off the drugs. Gives him something to occupy all that energy and brain power.”

He walks away from John, heading for the door, but he turns back when he reaches it. “And I put up with him because Sherlock Holmes is a great man,” he continues. “But I know there’s more to him than that. I know there’s good in him from the way he used to talk about you. From the way I saw him looking at you earlier at the crime scene. I’m sure that, one day, if we’re very lucky, Sherlock will prove that he’s a good man.”

_In some ways, you helped shape the man I am today._

John was harsh with Sherlock earlier when Sherlock said that, he’s starting to feel the guilt churn in his stomach just thinking about some aspects of that conversation at the restaurant. Whatever he may say, Sherlock’s journal is proof that they had a long-standing acquaintance, if not friendship. John has only known him a day, but he wants to build that relationship with him again. He wants them to get to that point because he wants this life. The danger, the excitement, the mad genius. No psychosomatic limp, and _Christ,_ he’s almost completely forgotten he ever had that already. Thanks to Sherlock.

“I think so too,” John says quietly.

And he is going to stick around to see it.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30th January 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 32)_

Sherlock watches John closely in the Chinese restaurant.

They’ve both eaten their fill to replace whatever calories they lost during the excitement of Sherlock risking his life and John taking one, and John is taking his time finishing his pint while Sherlock swirls his own drink around in its glass and watches him.

He thought he knew John Watson. Granted, he never knew the man’s surname or anything that could lead him to John (the versions that visited him would never give over that information, only the promise that they would eventually meet when the time was right), but he thought he knew John’s character.

And yet, he’d almost given John away to Lestrade because he hadn’t realised that it was John who took that shot through the window. He hadn’t realised that it was John who probably saved his life.

If he _was_ wrong about the pill, that is, which he still doesn’t think he was.

The whole evening has brought it home though that he doesn’t know John all that well, despite all the visits, despite all his efforts to find John in the eight years they were apart and the research he was able to do when Mycroft finally found John in Afghanistan. An odd report had come to Mycroft’s attention about an army doctor who disappeared in front of his unit with a physical description that just so happened to match the one Sherlock had desperately given him when he was twenty-five with the request that he use his resources to find John.

Mycroft quickly had that report destroyed, of course, and new reports were made leaving out all possible hints that anything unusual happened when John was shot. He was always good at making problems go away like that, Sherlock had to admit.

Mycroft hadn’t wanted to help him find and protect John at all, but did so for reasons that Sherlock can’t quite fathom but imagines must be self-serving. His older brother had never approved of their relationship (whatever that may be), especially after Sherlock got into drugs. Especially after Sherlock confessed – in what he will forever think of as his weakest moment – that the drugs not only calmed his mind but eased his loneliness when John wasn’t around. Not that he used the word 'loneliness'.

He owes Mycroft for his assistance though, and his brother knows it. That tacit acknowledgement between them is enough for the moment, but he knows Mycroft will eventually cash in the favour in some devious way. And Sherlock knows he isn’t going to like it one bit.

“You’re staring,” John says.

“Hmm?”

“You’re not here, are you?” John smiles knowingly. “I can tell you’re miles away.”

“I was just thinking about…” He isn’t sure how to end the sentence. It’s a feeling he’s not used to and it makes his brow furrow and his teeth clench. He’s tired of all this secrecy and sentiment, tired of himself when he’s like this.

“Were you thinking about the past?” John asks, cocking his head to one side to consider him.

Sherlock nods. It’s a safe answer. “I was thinking that I’ve got a list of dates for you to memorise and give to me when I’m seven.”

John blows out a breath and leans back in his chair. “Right. I suppose that’s going to take me a while. Listen,” John leans forward again, “earlier, I asked you what we used to do together when I visited you. Are you going to tell me anymore about that?”

There’s a lot he could say. His heart pounds as he cycles through the memories. John tending to a graze on his knee when he was seven, John testing his knowledge of the solar system when he was nine. Seeing John arrive, naked as always, when he was fourteen and realising that he didn’t see John like he used to anymore. The buttercup John held under his chin when he was fifteen. John kissing him at eighteen, stroking his ankle when he was saying goodbye to him for the last time in Cambridge.

His mouth is dry. If he opens his mouth to speak, it’s not going to come out right and John will _know_.

He ends up shaking his head in lieu of a verbal answer. When he gathers enough saliva again, he just says: “You’re going to tell me over and over that you can’t give away the future, so I’m not going to give away yours now.”


	5. A last meeting/A first time

_2 nd March 2002 (John is 37, Sherlock is 21)_

Showing up naked outside the entrance of a Cambridge college is not high on John Watson’s list of his finer moments.

Especially when his next magic trick is to throw up quite spectacularly on the cobblestones by the doors.

It’s definitely Cambridge; his surroundings look familiar because he’s been there before. There’s the same stone with the letters TCN inscribed on it, a memorial to one of the Fellows of the college. So it seems like he’s landed outside the great gate of Trinity College where Sherlock must be milling about somewhere, perpetually bored, occasionally high, and university aged. Well, sort of. He’ll be either twenty or twenty-one seeing as he went late and left early, ever the atypical git that John is used to. He lied when he said he was going at eighteen in another of his attempts to seduce John, ever the _manipulative_ git that John is used to.

John stands up straight, or rather, he attempts to stand up straight, lurches to one side and ends up dry heaving. _Fucking time travel._

When he gets his body back under control, he moves to the following item on the agenda: he needs clothes. It’s dark, and the gate to the college is closed, but that certainly does not mean the entrance is going to remain quiet and empty as it is now. It won’t be long before drunk, rowdy students return to harass the no doubt enormously patient porter.

The last time he visited Cambridge he found himself in an alley somewhere initially, where he prevented a mugging and managed to get himself a nice set of mugger’s clothes. Vile, but better than being arrested for public indecency like the other guy.

He prevented another attack that night, though he cared far more about the second almost-victim and thus dealt the would-be culprit a far more exacting punishment than just letting the police have him.

John blows a warm breath into his cupped, mercifully vomit-free hands, deciding how to proceed. He can’t enter the college without a stitch on, that would be disgraceful. His mother would turn in her grave.

God, this would be so much easier if he didn’t have to arrive _sans_ clothing and possessions every time he travels. He’d always carry a phone for starters if that were so. He would permanently dress in a coat, with gloves and maybe a scarf for good measure. He laughs as he thinks it. _I’d dress like Sherlock._

It’s a cold night, but he’s had worse. It feels like late winter, which corresponds to a particular date on the list that he’s not been looking forward to.

Sherlock has the list, so he must know John is here. Please don’t let him be engrossed in an experiment, John thinks, either in a lab or on himself, _please._

“Come on, Sher-”

The gate begins to creak open and John stops his half-hearted muttering to dart out of immediate sight a second too late. He’s been seen. Fuck, fuck, maybe he can-

“John?”

Oh thank God, it’s Sherlock.

Holding a wadded up sheet. Brilliant.

John edges back around the corner of the building he’d ineffectively hidden behind and takes the proffered sheet, draping it around himself and holding it closed at the front. It’s warm, the area of heat too big to be from Sherlock’s hands as they carried it. John bends his head and sniffs. A familiar scent of faded aftershave, smoke, and chemicals. That confirms it: this is Sherlock’s recently-laid-in bed sheet. The conclusion brings a rush of blood to his cheeks.

He must look ridiculous.

He looks at Sherlock properly then, taking in his smile, his own red-tinged cheeks, nose and ears. He’s dressed in a shirt and trousers, but the residual heat of the duvet against John’s skin suggests he wouldn’t have had time to _get_ dressed before coming out to meet him, which in turn suggests Sherlock had either been sleeping in his clothes (which John has always disapproved of), or that he had been clothed in bed but not asleep. John shakes his head – this is why he leaves the deductions to Sherlock.

Sherlock’s sleeves are rolled up, revealing pale forearms littered with goosebumps. John squints, but he knows the track marks don’t come until later and they’ll be slightly higher up than the point where Sherlock’s folded cuffs currently rest.

A never fully dormant ache flares up in John’s chest at the thought. He reaches out with the hand not holding the sheet together and takes hold of Sherlock’s wrist, rubbing a thumb over his pulse, his veins and tendons and bones (styloid process of the radius, the styloid process of the ulna under his own metacarpals).

Everything seems to jut out of Sherlock’s papery skin, everything inside him trying to get out. He’s particularly skinny at this age, living off stimulants and attitude, most prominently delicate at the wrists that let him play the violin, turn the wheels of a microscope, shoot up.

There’s a phantom tingle in John’s fingers around Sherlock’s forearm. It’s going to be a fairly quick visit, even though it’s one that should be extended, drawn-out. The last meeting they’ll have for eight long years.

They should do this inside.

“Is your room clean?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Yes, mother.”

John laughs, swipes his thumb over Sherlock’s warm inner wrist a final time and takes his hand back to clutch the sheet tighter around himself. It’s a little late; the material has been gaping open for the last minute or so since the wind blew. Sherlock neglected to tell him.

“No toxic experiments on the desk, dead things in the bed?”

“None,” Sherlock promises. “My bed is completely empty. At the moment.”

There’s only a flicker of innuendo in Sherlock’s tone, a pale comparison to two or three years ago when he was practically begging John with every _glance_ to exploit him. John frowns. Perhaps it’s not a come-on but a hint that there _have_ been people in Sherlock’s bed…

John ducks his head down as another wave of nausea hits. There’s nothing left in his stomach though, and he merely shudders and heaves once before straightening back up again, panting and wiping his dry mouth.

“Let’s go in before the porter wakes up,” he says. “It wouldn’t do to be caught outside with a naked man wrapped in a sheet at this hour.”

  
  
\----  


The room Sherlock leads him to is immaculate. John gapes as he crosses the threshold, wondering what’s happened to all the chaos he saw last time in Sherlock’s previous (next?) room. He’s not sure whether the mess has been cleared away or just not accumulated yet.

“What are you, twenty or twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one,” Sherlock says, sweeping through the door ahead of John and flopping back onto his coverless mattress where he lifts each leg in turn and divests himself of his shoes and socks, throwing them into opposite corners of the room. “I cleaned up this time as a thank you for the gallant rescue of yesteryear.”

Ah, he’s got his timings right then. His last visit is in Sherlock’s past. It’s not something John really wants to _re_ visit.

“No need to thank me.” John eyes the cupboard, assessing the likelihood of glassware and books tumbling down on him if he were to open the door.

It’s very likely that Sherlock’s idea of cleaning up is the same as shutting everything away out of sight.

Best not to open that door.

John walks in gingerly, giving the circular purple stain by the desk a wide berth and coming to sit at the end of Sherlock’s bed, still holding the sheet around himself.

Sherlock’s eyes are closed, his hands pressed together beneath his chin. “A fly-in visit, the list says.”

John nods, and then realises Sherlock can’t see him. “Yeah.”

“It’s also the last date on the list, I noticed.”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock’s eyes flick open and straight to John as he glares at him. “John. I’ve been extremely good about not questioning you on this before, the least you could do now is offer more than ‘yeah’.”

Sighing heavily, John leans back on his elbows, letting the sheet fall around him as he releases his grip on it. He’s still covered at the waist, not that it really matters anymore.

Sherlock extricates his feet from beneath him with a soft grunt of annoyance and then lays them against John’s arm, flexing his toes.

“Am I not going to see you again?” he asks quietly before John can form a more adequate response for him. “Did you lie when you said I would?”

John’s heart clenches at the matter-of-fact tone that Sherlock uses to cover up a world of hurt. “No, Sherlock,” he says, desperate for Sherlock to believe him. “I’ve never lied, not to you. You _will_ see me, but it’s going to be eight years before you do.”

There’s a long pause. Sherlock’s toes flex again. John moves his elbow over them, presses down. He turns his head and doesn’t see the expected smile but a grimace.

“Eight _years_? Why eight years? What’s happened? Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere, not really. It’s just the way things turn out with the time travel. I next meet you when you’re twenty-nine.”

“The longest it’s been before now is two years, why has it suddenly deviated from the pattern?”

“Sherlock, it’s never been an exact science. Why do I always show up in places where you are or where you’ve been?”

Sherlock throws his hands away from his face in irritation and crosses them over his chest. “I don’t _know_. Science doesn’t have a word for what you can do, or what you are. If I hadn’t seen you interact with other people I’d still be half-convinced that I made you up.” Sherlock’s brow furrows. “I’m still not entirely sure that I didn’t, sometimes.”

John takes his elbow off of Sherlock’s feet and grasps an ankle instead (too thin like his wrists, too thin for his liking). “I’m only as real as I think I am, and I’m not convinced myself.”

“You felt real when you kissed me,” Sherlock says, voice soft and low, eyes closed again when John looks over to him.

“I really did.”

Neither of them says anything for a moment. John strokes his fingertips along Sherlock’s ankle and then skims them down over the arch of his foot. Sherlock squirms and gasps. “Don’t.”

John stops; he knows how much Sherlock hates to be tickled. “In eight years time,” he says, “you’ll need to give me a list of the dates that I dictated to you when you first met me, because this time I’ll be meeting you for the first time.”

That gets Sherlock’s attention, his eyes snap open and he sits bolt upright, knees bent to bring their faces closer. “That’s when we meet in your present?”

John sits up a little to match him and nods, watching as Sherlock’s look of excitement fades into one of disappointment. “So you won’t know me, then.”

“But I _will_ do. Give me time, Sherlock, and I’ll get to know you. Be patient with me if I’m not the John you remember. You make me the John you know, after all.”

He reaches out a hand and lays it on Sherlock’s cheek, huffing out a laugh when Sherlock turns his face into the contact like a cat and then presses a brief kiss to his palm, eyes on John the whole time.

“You told me once that we’d be flatmates, and when we first met you said we were best friends, but we’ll be lovers too, won’t we?”

The old-fashioned word elicits a little curl of warmth in John’s stomach, a gentle tug of deep affection. No, John thinks, it’s love, call it what it is. He loves the Sherlock he’s left behind in the present, he loves this one that he’s about to leave in the past and all the others he’s left before. They’re the same man at different stages, and they all love him back. God knows why, but he’ll never question it too thoroughly in case someone notices the incredible gift he’s been given, the mistake that’s been made, and takes it all away.

He gives Sherlock a sad smile, moving his hand to press his tingling index finger against Sherlock’s lips. “That would be telling.”

Sherlock’s hand comes up to take his and brings it down from his mouth, gripping it between their chests. “You know I do though,” he says, eyes bright and intense. “You have to know that, even you couldn’t miss the signs.”

Sherlock has made a leap in his head, the declaration doesn’t follow on, but John understands him perfectly as always. He can’t say it back though, because he never does, he never did. He never will. Sherlock has told him so in the future: he never knew. John can’t change that. It feels like his heart is tearing itself in half, but he can’t make his mouth shape the words.

“I know,” he says instead. “I’ll see you soon, Sherlock.”

“Tell me your last name.” Sherlock squeezes his hand until it hurts. “I know you’ve been in the army, I know you’re a doctor. Just tell me your last name and I can find you. Whatever Arab countries you’re going to invade in the future, you haven’t gone there yet, so you must be here somewhere right now.”

John shakes his head, trying to pull his hand from Sherlock’s grip and failing. “You _know_ you can’t find me. You don’t, not for eight years. That’s how it happens, so don’t make this any harder, please. Just say goodbye to me and take care of yourself, all right?”

“No.”

“Sherlock.”

“I’m not saying it.”

The tingling in John’s hand intensifies, though it could just be Sherlock’s death grip cutting off the blood supply. “Please,” he says. “I don’t want to leave with you hating me.”

Sherlock’s mouth opens just slightly in disbelief. “Hating you? Did you not just hear what I said?”

Before John can answer, his hand goes slack in Sherlock’s and he fades away.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_13 th April 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 38 and, elsewhere, 33)_

It’s been over a week since the resolution of the case.

John is on a date with the GP he met through Mike Stamford tonight, the one he took to the Chinese circus.

Sherlock grits his teeth just thinking about it. This whole situation is getting to him in ways he never imagined it might. It has been since he took John to the bank with him, introduced John unthinkingly as ‘friend’, and John rebuffed him.

 _Colleague_.

As if there was nothing else between them. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? As far as John knows, there is nothing between them. They’re not friends, and they’re certainly nowhere near being anything more intimate than that.

And then the GP, Sarah, came into the picture.

Sherlock almost groans aloud. He’s been such a fool. It’s intolerable to him, when he knows how intelligent he is, just how incredibly _stupid_ he’s being. He’d opened himself up to rejection _yet again_ when John felt the need to explain what a date was to him. Why did he have to say it?

_“That’s what I was suggesting.”_

_“No, it wasn’t. At least I hope not.”_

After that, he told John about the circus because he knew that he could ruin the date – he could invite himself along and entice John away from Sarah with the promise of danger. Danger and exhilarating chases and intricate deductions that John would call _brilliant_ in a way that Sherlock had come to depend upon as a kind of sustenance (breathing and eating were boring).

Of course, then John went and got himself kidnapped, along with Sarah, and instead of running in the other direction after almost being killed, she had consented to a second and now a third date. Even Sherlock (though he may pretend otherwise when it suits him) is aware of convention. He knows what third dates result in.

So John will probably be with Sarah all night.

Sherlock sighs, pushing his face against the arm of the sofa until his eyes start to sting in protest.

 _All night_.

The thought is resisting deletion.

It’s just another example of John’s incontrovertible heterosexuality, really. It makes sense now, the rejection when he was eighteen – it wasn’t some sense of honour because of their respective ages that stayed John’s hand, it was that he simply never had, and never would feel for Sherlock all that Sherlock was sure he felt for John.

He did love John, he _must_ do. There could be no other name for these feelings that he’d held onto for so long, it must be love. This precise weakness fits all the criteria of love, which has proved itself to be just as destructive as he’d always been warned it was.

Love is the cause of his distraction and it will be his ruin. Mycroft is right. Damn him.

The rejection makes sense, and so does the consolation prize. John’s kiss when he was eighteen was nothing more than an offering of pity from a man who would come to be his dearest friend, his closest companion and confidante, but who would inevitably find someone else to fill that particular role for him.

Sherlock wonders if John is kissing Sarah right now. They’ve probably progressed beyond that already, knowing John.

He’s imagined John as a lover countless times before – he knows enough of John’s body and character to be sure he is accurate in his fantasies. John would be experienced where Sherlock was lacking, certainly. But he’d also be attentive where Sherlock was demanding, generous where Sherlock was selfish, restrained where Sherlock was consuming.

He imagines John with Sarah now: attentive where she was flattered, generous where she was grateful, restrained where she was demonstrative.

Sarah will not have to wonder whether she is in love with John or not, when the time comes. Sherlock hates her for that, if nothing else.

  
  
\----  


The John who arrives in Sherlock’s bedroom later that night is one of the older versions Sherlock has met, between thirty-seven and forty by the look of him. There are the usual physical indicators of John at that age: lines around the eyes (fatigue), weight dropped around the waist (stress). Tired, strained, sad.

Something happens to John at thirty-seven. Sherlock just hasn’t figured out what yet.

John clears his throat, still abashed by his nudity after all these years. He awkwardly covers himself, half turning away from Sherlock.

Sherlock wants to be the one to turn away this time. He’s seen John arrive naked so many times that he knows John’s body (by sight, at least) almost as well as his own. Today, the sight is unbearable when he knows what _his_ John – in a similar state of undress – must be doing elsewhere. Sherlock rolls onto his side, putting John out of his line of vision completely.

“Clothes upstairs,” he says, a low rumble that carries in the darkness, voice thick with the interruption of a rare attempt at a few hours’ sleep.

The footsteps he hears seem to be approaching the bed though, rather than walking away from it. The covers lift, there’s a heavy dip in the mattress, a creak of springs and then a body aligns itself with his.

Sherlock, who had been sleeping in just his pyjama bottoms, tenses at the first touch of John’s skin, the cold chest (John must have been outside before his jump) pressing against his back, still warm from sleep.

No one has climbed into Sherlock’s bed since childhood – the last person to do so was Mycroft after he had a nightmare at age five and Mummy was on the tablets that stopped her waking even during screams.

Friends don’t often crawl into each other’s beds. Sherlock is aware of convention.

Humid breath blows along the back of his neck, a damp chin fits over his shoulder. John’s jaw works as though grinding his teeth, his breaths hitching and shuddering.

“You’re upset,” Sherlock points out. It isn’t his sharpest deduction, granted.

John huffs in exasperation. “You could become a detective with observation skills like that,” he says. “How old are you? Thirty, thirty-one?”

The question is abrupt, but not unexpected. John’s over-estimated him this time though, which is interesting. Should he lie? He could probably fool John now. It was a lot less of a challenge for him when Sherlock’s face betrayed his age. Now, Sherlock can add a year and John will be none the wiser. John won’t be cagey with the details for a time period that hasn’t passed yet. That’s tempting.

Sherlock has always had issues with impulse control.

“Thirty-one,” he says, smooth as ever, “it’s April 2012.”

“And where am I tonight?” John asks immediately.

John’s heart rate picks up against Sherlock’s back. Fear? This would be so much easier if Sherlock could see his face.

“A jump. You’ve left me alone, _again_.”

John’s grip on him slackens, allowing Sherlock to turn in his arms and face him. John looks stricken, and Sherlock finds himself reaching out a hand to trace the fine lines by John’s eyes as he often does (checking for age), fingers trailing through moisture that’s not usually there.

“You know I don’t mean to.” John’s voice is hoarse. He’s been crying or shouting recently. Perhaps both.

Sherlock shrugs one shoulder and goes to draw his hand back. John catches his wrist, positions Sherlock’s palm flat over his cheek. He lets Sherlock’s arm go and shuts his eyes.

The gesture is so startlingly intimate – his hand, placed deliberately on John’s face, John’s eyes closed in apparent contentment – that Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat.

His mind races, an engine constantly rocketing forwards towards oblivion, only it’s suddenly come to the end of the line, there is no more track laid out. What does he do here? John is naked in his bed, John is touching him, he is touching John. They don’t do this. Do they? In the future, is this a normal occurrence?

He has to play his part; he has to see where this goes. He has to _know_.

“Of course you don’t mean to,” Sherlock says, “but- but it hurts just the same.”

A warning bell goes off in his head as he says it. That’s not playing the part, that’s showing his hand. Acting is made up of a thousand little truths, but there are some he can’t afford to give away for a mere performance.

John opens his eyes, and Sherlock instantly wishes he hadn’t. The depth of regret and sorrow there, it simply isn’t to be borne. It’s too much. It says John understands, why does he understand?

_John, what happens to you at thirty-seven?_

The expression melts away, replaced as quickly as it had first appeared over John’s features. He smiles, but there’s something missing. Pain lingers in the lack of creases around his eyes. “Thirty-one, you say?”

Sherlock nods.

“Thank God,” John says, and then he leans forward to close the last few centimetres of space remaining between them and kisses Sherlock.

Sherlock’s eyes remain open wide in shock for a moment, his hands move uselessly though the air by John’s head and he draws in a harsh, reflexive breath through his nose. John’s mouth is hot and insistent against his, pressing forward inexorably, and Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed as he presses back, hoping he’s more technically proficient this time around.

It’s only his second kiss though, and he still feels somewhat at sea with the whole thing. It’s overwhelming, how is he meant to think about what he’s doing? His senses are all filled with John: the image of his face seared onto Sherlock’s eyelids, the sounds of their scant breaths and the slick movements of their mouths, the sweetness of the lips that part his, John’s scent – earthy and fresh like grass after rain.

John pulls back, panting. Sherlock’s lips drag, open and wet, down from John’s mouth and over his jaw before he is pushed away with two hands at his shoulders.

“How old are you, really?” John asks. He is furious.

Sherlock scowls – caught out by a kiss. He must have been completely inept. His lack of familiarity in this area is humiliating, even though it _is_ all John’s fault.

“Twenty-nine,” he answers. “What does it matter?” He’s already reaching for John again but John’s hands come up to encircle his wrists, stopping him.

“So we’re not…” John trails off, eyes skating away from Sherlock’s intense stare.

That answers the question nicely. Thirty-one. When Sherlock is thirty-one, he and John do _this._

“So we will.”

John meets his eyes again. “Of course we will,” he says. “Hadn’t you already figured that out?”

“No. _When_?” It comes out more desperate than Sherlock intended.

There’s a pause, and then a dull smack as John swipes at his own forehead in realisation. “I’m with Sarah tonight, that’s why you’re so wound up, right?”

It isn’t a question, not really. It’s John’s own history, so he should have an idea where he was at roughly this time. The bit about him being wound up, well… John always has been perceptive, not in the way that Sherlock is, of course, but of the two of them, he is definitely the more knowledgeable one when it comes to matters of the heart.

Sherlock says nothing. John can read his silence easily enough.

“I’m on Sarah’s sofa tonight, Sherlock, not in her bed. I never did sleep with her, in the end.”

Something in Sherlock calms at that and goes back to rest. His pulse slows, _good, excellent,_ and then it races again as thinks about it and says: “Well, _we_ still could, you know.”

John’s brow furrows. “We could what?”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, you know I hate that.”

Sherlock shuffles closer, brings a pyjama-clad leg up and hooks it over John’s naked one, pressing their lower halves together. He’s been aroused since the first touch of John’s lips to his, and he can feel now that John is in a similar predicament. This is just silly, he thinks, they might as well do something about it.

John groans, head tipping back. Sherlock blinks at the exposed line of John’s throat. He has the most ridiculous urge to lean in and bite and mark and _claim_ and he does so, a scrape of teeth that’s just on the wrong side of gentle, and the movement presses them even more firmly together at the waist.

John’s hands are still around his wrists, tight enough now to cause him pain. “No, we can’t.”

“Why not?” Sherlock asks. “You can’t tell me you don’t want this. I can feel that, John.”

To demonstrate his point, he rocks his hips against John’s.

John lets out a choked sound, _oh_ , and releases Sherlock’s forearms to take his face in his hands and kiss him again.

Sherlock tries to keep up with the pace, but John is ahead of him here – both in age and experience. He has no idea what he is supposed to do, and so instead does what he _wants_ to do, opening his mouth to John’s tongue and running a hand down from John’s shoulder to press against his chest, feeling the elevated heart rate that matches his own.

It’s the middle of spring and while the weather is turning warmer, Sherlock knows he shouldn’t be feelings as hot as he is. John’s skin has warmed up and Sherlock is already burning all over. He feels light-headed, dizzy. Is the burning from oxygen deprivation in his muscles? They’re still kissing, John’s tongue stroking his, he’s not getting enough air. Breathing’s boring, he doesn’t need oxygen to live, he needs _this_. His palms feverishly take in all the sense-memory they can – the difference between skin that’s dry and skin that’s filmed with a thin sheen of sweat, the difference between unmarred skin and skin that’s been broken, stitched, healed.

Sherlock doesn’t stray below the waist with his hands, but John still sighs into his mouth as he explores. The need is suddenly so sharp, so deep that it almost feels like pain.

Sherlock is aching. He knew, he just _knew_ it would be like this.

“We haven’t-” John is breathless as he breaks them apart to speak, the hushed words spilling over Sherlock’s lips, still close enough to touch. “At this time, we haven’t yet.”

“All the more reason to do it now,” Sherlock replies, like it’s already decided.

John tips his head forward and rests his brow against Sherlock’s. He laughs. “Our first time, I knew it couldn’t be _your_ first time with me. You knew me too well, you knew what I like.”

There’s a feeling like a jerk, a distinct downward tug of _something_ in Sherlock’s stomach. It’s something he has no reference for, no name. Physically, it feels like falling when there’s nothing to catch you, when you don’t know how far there is left to fall.

“As you know me.”

John lays a hand against Sherlock’s face, pulls back enough that he can look at him as he sweeps his thumb tenderly, repeatedly over a cheekbone. “As I know you.”

Sherlock searches John’s expression: there’s love in the gaze, certainly, but the grief is still equally palpable. It chills him, despite the heat of John’s body against his. It’s incongruous; it doesn’t belong here now with them together like this.

He’s figured it out.

“I’m not with you, in your time,” he says. “What’s happened?”

John’s hand combs through Sherlock’s hair, the fingertips light against his scalp. _Don’t ask anymore,_ the touch says.

For once, Sherlock won’t, because he’s distracted by the way John’s face sets, heated determination in his eyes now like he’s made up his mind about something.

“Have you done this with anyone?” John asks. “I know you hadn’t at eighteen, there wasn’t really time when you were twenty-one and then it was eight years until we met again…”

John reaches down between them, the first teasing touch of his hand to Sherlock’s navel making him jump slightly. John takes his hand away, an apology already in his eyes, and Sherlock catches his wrist, attempting to guide him back towards the anticipated destination. He rolls his eyes when John resists.

“Don’t ask when you _know_ I haven’t wanted to do this with anyone but you. You must know that, I must have told you at some point.”

“You might have done.”

John’s eyes slip closed and he shifts his hips against Sherlock’s, grinds his bare erection against Sherlock’s covered one. The gasp Sherlock lets out at that is stolen from him, taken by John’s lips as they slant eagerly over his.

“I don’t-” Sherlock starts when John breaks the kiss, faltering when John begins mouthing his way down Sherlock’s jaw. “I don’t know-”

John continues his path downwards, trailing warm, open-mouthed kisses along Sherlock’s sternum, across the quivering muscles in his abdomen. He tucks his fingers under the waistband of Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms but doesn’t pull them down; he just strokes the backs of his fingers along the sensitive skin of Sherlock’s pelvis. Back and forth, back and forth. Below that, the intermittent movement of the cotton of his pyjamas against his cock is maddening.

Sherlock can _easily_ label this as the most erotic thing to have ever been done to him, although he knows that his past experience is inexistent, and he has an idea that this label is going to undergo many revisions as they go along.

“Come on,” he huffs when John repeats the move with a smirk, not progressing any further.

John laughs but obliges, pulling the bottoms down past Sherlock’s knees and then off. He comes back up to align his hips with Sherlock’s again, easing himself down between legs that spread for him almost automatically.

He stops just before their skin can touch, no barriers between them now. He catches Sherlock’s half-lidded, glazed stare.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock meets his eyes, reads the question in them. He knows John’s intention and he wants to struggle, almost. He wants to struggle and writhe and get away because it’s too much, it’s too intense. At the same time, he also wants to stay stock-still and let John do whatever he wants to him, because it’s not enough, it can _never_ be enough. He _aches_ for John, and he just needs-

Two hands find and take hold of his. John’s fingers fit into the spaces between Sherlock’s, his palms push until Sherlock moves his arms out, until his elbows are bent and pinned to the mattress by his sides. It makes him feel grounded, and he relaxes momentarily.

“It’s okay,” John says, looking down at him. “Calm down. Remember: I know you.”

Sherlock relaxes further at the words. John knows him. John has done this before. With him. Many times, probably. Oh, that’s-

“I’ll take care of you,” John is murmuring as he squeezes Sherlock’s hands. “I know every single inch of you. I know what you like.”

Vaguely, in some bizarre section of his mind that can’t even lose awareness when he is about to have sex, Sherlock feels that he should be complaining. The sort of lust-addled, possessive sentiments dripping from John’s lips are not something he would ordinarily want to hear.

Right now though? They’re _glorious_. Close and intimate and knowing. John’s soft words and quickened breaths ghosting over his ear and making him shiver. It’s getting to him because no one knows him like John. No one could ever know him the way John does, or will.

The thought is intoxicating, and the dizzying high it produces is more potent than anything he’s ever injected into his body. Sherlock’s head is spinning, but the usual whirling chaos has been exchanged for heady focus. He’s never been so affected before without there being chemicals involved. But there _are_ chemicals at work here, aren’t there? Hormones and neurotransmitters and it’s all just chemistry except for how it really isn’t – he’s never felt like this with anyone else, never imagined it with anyone else. Only John. For all these years, it’s only ever been John. Because he loves John.

He _does_ , of course he does. How could he doubt it? How could he question it?

“I know what makes you come." John is still speaking, his voice getting louder, rising in confidence. "I know what makes you _beg_ to come, Sherlock. Tell me that you want me to show you. Tell me you want that.”

John is barely touching him, but Sherlock is panting as if he’d just chased down two serial killers. John leans down slightly, _finally_ , so that their erections meet. There’s still tension in his back though as he holds his body above Sherlock’s, not pressing down with his full weight.

He stays still for a moment, as if letting Sherlock adjust.

Sherlock isn’t sure he’ll ever adjust.

“Please,” he says, eyelashes just brushing his cheeks as he closes his eyes. “ _John_.”

John knows what he likes, and he wants to be shown because _he_ doesn't even know that. He wants to learn what John likes, ready for when his John- or is _this_ his John? Aren’t they all his?

 _Yes,_ he thinks fiercely, and untangles his fingers from John’s to move his hands to John’s back. He digs his fingernails in, and John’s shoulderblades shudder under his palms. He uses his grip to bring John’s body into his, as close as they can be while still being separate, while still being individuals, wrapped in their own skin.

Right now, he wants to fuse their bones, their blood vessels, their flesh. He could breathe John’s air, share John’s scars. He could live inside John, perfect and invincible and whole. His incomparable brain and John’s steadfast heart. If ever two people were made to be one, surely it was them.

John responds to him – he pushes as Sherlock pulls, pushes his cock against Sherlock’s and moans at the friction, the sensation. John should be used to this, Sherlock thinks, he shouldn’t be this eager.

“Oh God,” John says, the words cut off and strangled as he swallows to cover another moan.

He reaches down again to curl his hand around Sherlock, who lets out a shaky breath and jerks his hips. He’s incredulous when he realises he didn’t consciously mean to do either of those things.

This is the first touch of a hand that isn’t his own, and it is indescribable. It shouldn’t be – by all rights, John’s hand is not that different from his, the only changes being his slightly smaller palm, his shorter fingers, callouses in different places – but it _is,_ because it’s John and he moves his hand just so, he twists it over the head, he swipes his thumb languorously over the slit on the downstroke. Sherlock knows what he’s going to do to himself; he has no clue what John is going to do to him at any given moment. It’s thrilling, and so, so much better.

Sherlock insinuates his own hand between them, scratches his nails lightly through the hair that runs from John’s navel down to his groin, and brushes the backs of his knuckles against John’s erection. He’s enjoying (loving) being pressed so close to John, but the downside is he can’t see all of him. A lot of data is being denied to him. He’ll have to ask for John’s measurements – flaccid and erect, of course, though he’s got a good idea about flaccid already from John’s numerous arrivals – later on.

“Now is not the time to get your measuring tape out, Sherlock,” John gasps the words, breathless and amused.

Sherlock raises his head from where he’s been trying to get a proper look at John’s cock, mouth opening in surprise.

“Not a mind reader,” John assures him, eyes pinching shut and mouth opening to match Sherlock’s when Sherlock moves his hand and closes it around him. “I just know you.”

That phrase again. Sherlock feels a rush of pleasure just hearing it.

He catalogues the things he can’t see with his palm and fingers. Girth, length, and shape are easily estimated. He finds them all to be fairly average, according to the knowledge he’s garnered from books. Typical John, hiding his extraordinary self in his ordinary exterior.

He catalogues John’s responses as he goes too, finding that John seems to like the attention as Sherlock runs his inquisitive fingertips lightly along his glans, the corona, and particularly when he spreads pre-come from the tip down on his way to caress the frenulum.

“Jesus,” John breathes out, his eyes still closed, “do that again.”

Sherlock does, and then moves his attention back to the shaft and head, copying the technique John is using on him. John continues to stroke him in return, speeding up from his previous slow, torturous pace. He’s getting impatient.

“I forgot how quiet you were when we first started doing this,” John says abruptly. “Open your mouth, let me hear you.”

Until now, Sherlock has been taking quick breaths through his nose, not trying to be silent but managing it compared to John’s moans and sighs. He opens his mouth, ragged breaths audible as he pants against John’s neck. If anything, it heightens his arousal, hearing the effect of their exertions, hearing what John does to him.

“John, I’m-” he can’t get the words out.

“Are you close?” John asks urgently. “Your _voice_ , God, it always gets me there. I am, I am so close, Sherlock. Nearly there.”

Sherlock has been teetering on the edge for some time, he barely touches himself, and this is the object of his desire since his teenage years touching him for the first time and telling him how close he gets him to orgasm. Sherlock knew he wasn’t going to last long.

When he goes to reply, all he manages is to gasp out _John_ before stiffening, and then spasming uncontrollably as he comes with a low, drawn-out groan.

“That’s it,” John is saying above him, mumbling nonsense as he strokes and squeezes him through it. “That’s it, you’re there now.”

Sherlock slumps back against the mattress when it’s over, head turning to one side and his grip around John loosening as he loses just about all the tension in his body. John pushes into his slack fist a couple of times anyway and then there’s a spurt of fluid over his hand as John comes too. “Oh fuck, Sherlock-”

John collapses against his chest after, breathing hard and fast for a moment before he begins to relax and come back to himself.

“Christ.”

Sherlock’s reply is a sated, deeply content “mmm” from his throat. He feels very sleepy all of a sudden.

The rumbled syllable reverberates through John and he laughs. “I’d forgotten how much sex makes you stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Sherlock says, but it’s a half-hearted attempt at sounding affronted.

He closes his eyes and turns his face upwards for a kiss, and John indulges him. Their mouths meet and move lazily for several minutes, Sherlock still learning all the while. They break apart only to come back together again and again, initially trading brief closed-mouth kisses before one of them feels the need to deepen them.

Eventually, John finds himself doing more and more of the work as Sherlock decreases in responsiveness.

“Tired?” he asks fondly.

That “mmm” noise again. Sherlock’s eyes remain closed.

John presses a last lingering kiss to Sherlock’s soft, pliant mouth and then rests his head against Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Sleep then, and I’ll be gone and the other me will be home before you wake up.”

“Sticky,” Sherlock complains weakly.

“Easily fixed later. Sleep.”

And Sherlock does, one hand carefully grasping John’s until that particular version of John fades out of the time period.

Sherlock doesn’t wake when he goes.


	6. First standoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Thanks to everyone who's commented and to those who still have an interest in this fic. I shall try to return to a more regular posting pattern!

_29 th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33)_

Sherlock had been to this pool only once before, after he dropped out of Cambridge at twenty-one, when he first came to London. He’s not sure why he went there, really. It wasn’t helpful, any evidence from the Carl Powers case was long gone by then. It was a rare moment of nostalgia, perhaps, for where he began as he was about to strike out on his own and establish himself in the position he invented because no other would fit.

Everything he had worked out about the Carl Powers case had been from the information in the newspapers in 1989, when he was just a boy. It gave him enough of an idea to be able to tell that something other than a seizure had happened to Carl Powers, something far more calculated. He hadn’t been allowed to go to London when he was just eight years old though. Mycroft wouldn’t take him, and it was difficult to make his own way there at that age.

It was John that made him drop his obsession, in the end. He told John all about the research he’d gathered during one of John’s visits and John had listened, patient as ever, before gently telling Sherlock he needed to let it go. He didn’t tell Sherlock that he was too young to be involved in such things like most of the adults Sherlock had spoken to, he just told him what Sherlock already knew – that his age would prevent anyone _letting_ him get involved in such things.

He knows now that it was John’s first visit to him in the past. It helped him solve Moriarty’s shoe puzzle in the present when John told him the particulars of his visit after returning.

The stress of being unable to help the soon-to-be victims of Moriarty’s mind games mixed with his frustration with Sherlock over his apathy towards those same victims pushed John into travelling a few times after that.

He always returned without whatever fury or disappointment he left in, and Sherlock was glad for it while bitterly knowing that he can never live up to the innocence and promise of his younger self. John was enjoying the glimpses of a boy that no longer was. He probably thought that boy somehow redeemed the man Sherlock has become, and Sherlock has always known he’d be too selfish to tell John any differently when the time came.

He hopes leaving John out of this suicide mission is apology enough for that.

After learning the truth about Carl Powers, Sherlock couldn’t think of any other venue for his inevitable meeting with Moriarty. He remembered the layout of the building from 2002, but in hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best place to choose for a blind meet with his self-styled arch-nemesis. There was a certain dramatic symmetry to it, of course, but strategically he’s made himself vulnerable. A lot could have changed from when he was last here. He should have chosen a more familiar venue to give himself more of an advantage going in. He’ll just have to hope that any disadvantage will be Moriarty’s too.

He looks around as he walks through the door, vigilant eyes flicking about for any sign of Moriarty. There are dozens of places he could be hiding. He glances upwards too, checking the balconies that overlook the pool.

It’s a peculiar place to be at night, empty and quiet, only the fluorescent strip lights creating any source of luminance and reflecting off the water. One light flickers above him. On and off, on and off. It’s distracting.

The stifling heat in the room is beginning to prickle at his skin. It’s warm enough that his palms are starting to sweat, and he holds the USB stick tightly so it doesn’t slip as he raises his arm to display it.

“Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present,” he calls out, voice echoing off the walls and water. “That’s what it’s all been for, hasn’t it? All your little puzzles, making me _dance_ , all to distract me from this.”

He moves as he says it, still unsure where he should be directing his address. His back is turned to the pool when he hears a door open and shut with a metallic clang. He looks over his shoulder at the noise, still holding the memory stick aloft.

He looks over his shoulder and he sees John.

He sees John walk out from the changing rooms in a thick coat, hands in the pockets. His face is devoid of any emotion.

Sherlock suddenly feels like _he’s_ the one to have been dosed with Botulinum toxin. His face is fixed in an expression of disbelief, his mouth won’t form words. He can’t lower his arm. His feet won’t shift from their current position.

It seems bitterness isn’t the only paralytic. Finally he understands what it truly means to be frozen in shock.

His mind has ground to a halt, he can’t think. He can barely _breathe_.

All he can think is: _John was meant to be at Sarah’s. John was meant to be safe._

“Evening,” John says, his tone as flat and hollow as his features.

The sound of John’s voice, however foreign, seems to reboot Sherlock somewhat. His arm lowers as gravity takes effect to help him, but the rest of him remains stock-still, all his energy diverted to his brain as it starts back up, the usual rocketing engine chugging forward at a pitiful pace.

_I’m here to meet Moriarty. John is here. John can’t be Moriarty._

_John can’t be Moriarty._

_John._

“This is a turn-up, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

The single thought in his brain escaping from his mouth is how he finds he can move his lips again, as he lets out a hushed, desperate plea: “ _John_.”

John cannot be Moriarty.

John is not Moriarty.

But this all started when John moved in, he only heard the name ‘Moriarty’ the day after he met John. What if that wasn’t a mere coincidence?

“What the hell-”

“Bet you never saw this coming.”

His lower limbs come back next, he’s got his full body under control once more. He walks forward a few uneasy steps, still confused, still shocked. He can’t contemplate this. This is John, his flatmate, his friend, the man who has already begun to visit him in the past.

_John cannot be Moriarty._

He just can’t be. Sherlock cannot entertain the possibility for even a split-second, he can’t or he’ll go mad. He knows this is John Watson. Mycroft found him in Afghanistan, bleeding in a field hospital.

This is all a trick, it has to be. John’s face tells him that, his carefully blank expression melting into one of restrained anguish as he takes his hands out of his pockets and moves them (gloves, John doesn’t usually wear gloves) to hold open the coat…

Revealing a torso covered by a vest that carries the extensive wiring mechanism of a bomb.

A red dot meanders down over it – the laser sight of a sniper rifle.

Sherlock is back to paralysis again.

“What would you like me to make him say next?” John asks, the pauses between the words and the words themselves making it evident that Moriarty is talking in his ear, getting John to be his mouthpiece the way he did with his other victims.

“I have an idea,” John says slowly, eyes pinching shut and shaking his head as he listens to whatever Moriarty says next. “How-” John breaks off, shakes his head again. There’s a short silence before he opens his eyes wide, fixing them on Sherlock meaningfully, his bright gaze full of fear and apology. “How about ‘I love you’?”

John’s voice cracks on the last word and he shuts his eyes again tightly, bowing his head in shame.

Sherlock opens his mouth to retort _why would I want to hear that,_ and nothing, absolutely nothing comes out except for a clicking noise from his dry throat. He clamps his mouth shut so hard that his teeth knock together painfully.

John speaks again with his eyes still closed. “Sherlock Holmes, speechless at last.”

“Stop it,” Sherlock says quietly when he regains the ability.

“But I’m having so much fun,” John is looking at Sherlock directly now, still with that awful regret shining out of his eyes. “I could make him say everything you’ve ever wanted him to say, would you like that?”

Sherlock finds himself moving forwards, moving towards John, looking around for Moriarty and the sniper (is _Moriarty_ the sniper?) as he goes. He’s not going to play this game, he won’t let this be used against him. This isn’t a weakness, he won’t allow it to be.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, turning his head in all directions as he advances, searching for anything, any glimmer of movement. Moriarty has to be here, he would _want_ to be here to see this.

“I think you do. Nice touch this, by the way. The pool where little Carl died. I stopped him.” The laser sight moves higher on John’s chest, points steadily at his heart. John visibly falters before giving the next bit of Moriarty’s narrative: “I can stop John Watson too. Stop his heart.”

“You do that,” Sherlock says, biting out the words, voice firmer than he’d hoped it might be, “and I will not rest until I stop _yours_. Now show me your face.”

The door opposite the one he came in through opens at the far end of the pool behind John.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” comes a lilting, sing-song voice. “Don’t you remember me? I gave you my number! I thought you might call…”

A man walks into the room, hands in the pockets of his suit trousers. Sherlock recognises him instantly, though it’s quite a change from tinted eyelashes and garish green underwear.

“Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? Or,” the man grins, a flash of pointed, pearly teeth, “perhaps it’s John you’re pleased to see?”

Sherlock draws the gun from his trouser pocket and raises it to aim at Moriarty. “Oh, this is definitely all for you.”

The grin doesn’t falter. “I’m touched. Jim Moriarty. Hi.”

There’s not a lot for Sherlock to deduce about Moriarty – his accent is variable but clearly Irish, his voice is high-pitched but it drops, a hint of madness in the erratic speech pattern, his suit is pristine, clearly expensive, clearly designer. He’s either confident or careless, from the way he walks. Both, maybe.

“Jim?” Moriarty repeats, as if imitating what Sherlock isn’t saying in his silence. “Jim from the hospital?”

He continues to walk forwards along the poolside, moving closer towards them. Sherlock watches him advance, keeping half his attention on John, stoic and unflinching in the vest with his back to Moriarty.

Sherlock brings up his other hand to the pistol, the better to hold it steady.

“That’s where I figured it out,” Moriarty says, stopping a few feet from where John is standing. “In the lab. I know you were wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

Moriarty tilts his head and pouts. “ _Now_ you want to play games? All right,” he shrugs. “I know you were wondering how I figured out that you fancy yourself in love with him.”

Sherlock’s fingers tighten around the gun. He doesn’t dare glance at John, afraid of what he’ll see in his face. Anything but pity, anything but that.

It will hardly matter if John finds out if they’re both going to die here, but Sherlock isn’t planning to die today. He needs to cut this conversation off and quickly.

“You’ve got it completely wrong, how disappointing.”

“Oh, I haven’t. Before you met him, I happen to know that you spent at least four years _searching_ for an army doctor, if not this one specifically. What happened, did you wake up one day with an unusual craving?”

Sherlock feels some of the blood leave his face, his stomach edging lower out of its usual position. How can he know about that? That was between him and Mycroft.

“Or rather,” Moriarty continues, “you had Big Brother searching. How did it feel, asking him for help? I don’t imagine it felt good.”

John’s gaze is a heavy weight on him, palpable in the tension, but Sherlock still can’t look at him, not when Moriarty is exposing him this badly.

“You weren’t very subtle about it, the pair of you. I managed to find out about your obsession without much effort, your brother obviously didn’t deem it worthy of much of a cover-up. Of course, most _ordinary_ people wouldn’t be able to find out what you were up to. I doubt John here knows, unless you’ve told him.”

Moriarty reaches John as he says it and brings a palm down on John’s left shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock sees John wince, but he doesn’t jump.

“Imagine my surprise, Sherlock, discovering this search for an army doctor and then finding out that the second this one got invalided home he was moving in with you! What’s that all about? And then there’s the fact that, by all accounts, the two of you had never met before, so you’ve known each other for what? A few months now? Hardly long enough for our resident sociopath to form such an intense attachment that I would notice it on our first meeting.”

Sherlock thinks back to the lab, Molly introducing her new ‘boyfriend’ to him, him barely looking up from the microscope, dismissing Jim as gay… What sign had there been that he felt anything for John? He hadn’t even interacted with John while Moriarty was there.

“There was nothing to notice,” he says confidently.

Moriarty’s face positively lights up at that. “Silly, there was _everything_ to notice. The first being your peculiar attentiveness towards him. You were looking down a microscope, but your head was angled towards him, just slightly. Was there a moment in that room when you weren’t aware of where he was? The way you’ve reacted to everything tonight has only confirmed it. I remember that he spoke for you, after you were so _awfully_ rude to me. Looking at him now, he’s completely oblivious, isn’t he? He had no idea about this pathetic little crush you think you have on him.”

Sherlock flicks his eyes to John for a nanosecond, hoping he won’t be caught, but knowing he will be. John is looking straight at him, as predicted, and their eyes meet and hold. John doesn’t look angry, he just looks confused and sad, his lips just barely parted. He looks like he’s working out a complicated mental problem, like he’s revisiting all their previous exchanges and turning them over in his mind, looking for new meanings, things he previously thought were insignificant.

Sherlock fervently hopes he hasn’t been too transparent.

“Your powers of observation are evidently inferior to mine,” he says, trying to keep the usual coolness to his tone. “You’ve jumped to conclusions and ended up with the startlingly incorrect one that two plus two must equal five.”

“No, the conclusion I’ve come to is that you must have known him somehow before he met you. Why else would you be searching for an army doctor in Afghanistan prior to meeting him for what was supposed to be the first time? Why would you let him live with you and follow you around on your little cases? Why else would you act like you think you’re in love with him if it really had only been a few months, after a lifetime of apparent celibacy and shunning just about all other human contact?”

“I would hardly expect you to understand.”

“I think I do, though. You see, I’ve begun to put this picture together. You and Big Brother, orchestrating this search. Johnny here getting shot, and all the reports about it being very patchy indeed. Him coming home and moving in with you. Tell me, did your brother organise for him to be shot?”

Sherlock is honestly surprised by the accusation. He looks to John automatically, he can’t help it, and finds John’s mouth open in shock, his focus shifted from Sherlock to Moriarty now. He’s listening to him, possibly believing what he’s hearing.

Organise for John to be shot? Sherlock would sooner organise a contract on his own life.

“I can’t work out why,” Moriarty continues, “but it seems like you wanted him in your life pretty badly. I’m sure you would have gone to the lengths necessary to get that, but I wonder how John feels about it, hmm? You can talk, Johnny boy. Go ahead.”

Moriarty moves forward and nudges John’s shoulder with his own. John edges away from him with a shudder of revulsion, closing his eyes at the unwelcome touch.

When he opens his eyes again, he looks to Sherlock, clearly seeking reassurance. He doesn’t speak. No doubt he’s been told not to talk at all, other than whatever poison Moriarty has been dripping into his ear.

Sherlock wonders what can he say himself. Yes, I was searching for you. No, I didn’t have you shot so you would be returned to me.

“You must know,” he ends up saying. “You must know that I wouldn’t.”

John has been upset with him for a while now – over his lack of care for the victims of the bombings, over his general refusal to be the one-dimensional hero John wants him to be. But John can’t really think that Sherlock would arrange _anything_ that would directly hurt him. Or anyone, for that matter, without a good motive behind it. He’s not like Moriarty, he just doesn’t work that way.

Moriarty may be citing a few months as too short a space of time to fall in love, and he may be right, but it’s enough time to develop an understanding with someone, if nothing else.

John’s mouth closes. His jaw is tight as he nods, certainty in his eyes.

“How moving,” Moriarty says, the lilting quality back to his voice, bright and mocking. “He believes you. He’s misplaced his loyalty in you though, Sherlock, hasn’t he? You’re not _really_ in love with him, you’re not capable of that. He doesn’t know that you’re just like me. If it came to it, you’d trade his life for your own in a heartbeat.”

Said heartbeat makes itself known in his thumb against the gun as Sherlock grips the weapon with too much pressure at Moriarty’s words. His pulse thunders against the cool metal, _wrong, wrong, wrong_. It feels like a revelation, his own blood singing out the truth, but it’s nothing new, not really.

It’s always been the other way around for Sherlock, and he knows he’ll end up showing it. Tonight, probably.

John can travel. He’s already stressed, possibly even working to stay grounded already. If Sherlock can just ratchet up the tension a bit more, John will be gone. John will be safe.

“Perhaps,” he says, tilting the gun left and right in a so-so gesture, “but I’d rather trade yours.”

He takes aim steadily again. If he fires, the bullet will end up lodged right between Moriarty’s eyes. The laser point on John’s chest bobs – a warning.

“No, you wouldn’t. You need me, you need what I’ve shown you. I’ve given you a glimpse, Sherlock, just a teensy glimpse of what I’ve got going on out there in the big bad world. I’m a specialist, you see. Like you!”

“I know. ‘Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover’s nasty sister?’ ‘Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?’ Consulting criminal. Brilliant.”

Moriarty smiles: prideful, almost nostalgic. “Isn’t it? That’s why you need me, you need someone _brilliant,_ someone just like you. But you’re getting in my way now, so this is a friendly warning, my dear: back off.”

“I will stop you,” Sherlock promises, but his eyes are on that laser sight.

The smile becomes a maniacal grin. “Not while I’m holding lover-boy hostage.”

Sherlock hasn’t looked at John since he didn’t immediately deny that he wouldn’t sacrifice John for his own sake. The disappointment in John’s eyes would be hard to bear, considering what he has to do now.

The plan is formulating: offer Moriarty the USB stick as a distraction, John will attempt to take Moriarty hostage, Moriarty will threaten Sherlock instead, John will back down, Sherlock will latch onto Moriarty then, dragging him away from John and he’ll point the gun ready to take them both down, with John far enough away that, when he fires, John will have just enough time to travel if he hasn’t already.

It’s not ideal, but he’ll eliminate Moriarty and save John. It’s the second best outcome he could have achieved.

Now to let it play out.

Eyes still fixed resolutely on Moriarty, Sherlock removes one hand from the pistol, reaching down to his pocket to hold out the memory stick. “Take it.”

“Oh, that,” Moriarty says, striding forwards to take the small, insignificant bit of plastic from Sherlock’s hand. “The missile plans!”

Moriarty brings the USB stick to his mouth, kissing it. He lowers it back down and considers it for a moment. “Boring!” he declares, flicking his hand to toss the memory stick into the pool. “I could have got those anywhere.”

This is the moment John chooses to lunge forward, bodily throwing himself at Moriarty’s back and wrapping both arms around him securely, one around his neck and the other around his chest.

“Sherlock, run!” he yells.

Sherlock had been expecting John to act at some point, but it still catches him slightly off-guard. He manages to keep the gun aimed correctly, even as he takes a small step back in surprise.

Moriarty actually laughs, like this is the best development he could have wished for. “Good,” he says. “ _Very_ good. Seems like he still believes in you despite everything!”

“If your sniper pulls that trigger, Mr Moriarty,” John is breathing hard as he speaks, trying to keep hold of his hostage, “then we both go up.”

“So ready to sacrifice himself for you,” Moriarty says, still speaking to Sherlock, the full force of his obsession breaking through as he barely blinks. “Maybe he _does_ love you after all! Maybe it’s just that he’s your loyal pet. It doesn’t matter, because you’ve rather shown your hand there, Dr Watson.”

John’s eyes widen, the fire in them suddenly doused. Sherlock doesn’t have to be a genius to work out that there must be a little red dot dancing over his forehead, not with John’s fearful gaze trained there.

“Gotcha,” Moriarty says smugly.

John’s arms go loose at once and he steps back from Moriarty, raising his hands in surrender. Moriarty brushes both hands down over his suit to straighten it, irate.

Sherlock keeps the gun level, thinking about the next part of the plan. There could still be a way out for both him and John, if he says the right things. Moriarty is unpredictable enough and he’s talked as if he wants Sherlock alive. Someone _brilliant_ , someone to challenge him.

Moriarty is speaking again. “D’you know what happens if you don’t leave me alone, Sherlock, to you?”

“Oh let me guess,” he drawls. “I get killed.”

Moriarty’s eyebrows lower and he looks briefly offended by the insinuation. “No, don’t be obvious. I mean, I’m going to kill you anyway, some day. I don’t want to rush it though, I’m saving it up for something special. No, no, no. If you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you.”

He tips his head towards John pointedly, still standing with his hands high in surrender behind them. “I’ll burn the _heart_ out of you.”

It’s a rather obvious metaphor, but Sherlock takes him at his word. He’s never feared that anyone might use John to get to him, so confident that his feelings were well-concealed, a secret to be shared between the two of them if it was ever to be shared at all. Looks like he was wrong. An unforgivable oversight on his part.

“I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one,” he says softly, one last try for the safety afforded by denial.

Moriarty looks at him, mouth turned down as if in pity. “But we all know that’s not quite true. You most of all, Sherlock.”

Abruptly, his face changes, and he looks around the room as if searching for something for a moment. “Well, I’d better be off. It’s been nice to have a proper chat, but I’m sure you boys have a lot to discuss now.”

Sherlock raises the gun slightly. “What if I was to shoot you, right now?”

“Then you could fondly remember how surprised I looked,” Moriarty opens his mouth into a wide shocked ‘o’, raising his eyebrows. “Not for very long, of course, because killing me would be the end of your life too.” He begins to turn away, ready to leave. “So it’s goodbye for now, Sherlock Holmes.”

And with that he walks away, looking back only once before he heads through the door John came in through earlier on.

Sherlock keeps the pistol trained on him as he goes, walking forward after him to do so. “Catch… you… later.”

He points the gun at the empty doorway. Moriarty’s voice drifts back through, sing-song and childish: “No you won’t!”

The door closes. Sherlock waits for a few agonising seconds, waiting for Moriarty to come back. When nothing happens, he finally lets his eyes sweep over to John, instantly taking him in. Exhausted, relieved, mercifully unharmed. Still with a bloody bomb attached to him.

Sherlock drops the gun, ignores the way it clatters to the floor as he pitches forward, ending up on his knees before John and gets his shaking hands on the fastenings of the vest.

“All right?” he hears himself ask, voice hard and insistent.

He’s more aware of the words coming out of his mouth the second time, more urgent after John doesn’t reply, head tilted back as if he no longer possessed the muscle tone to keep it up. Sherlock’s fingers scrabble at the vest, desperate to unfasten it and get it away from John as quickly as possible. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” John answers, still panting, trembing under his hands, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

There’s a panicky feeling lodged somewhere around Sherlock’s throat as he stands, moving around John to pull the coat and vest off him. He tugs forcefully, breathing hard through his nose to match John’s gasps through his mouth.

“I’m fine,” John repeats, but he sounds very distant and quiet to Sherlock then, completely focused as he is on his task, still pulling at the coat and vest.

“You have to believe that everything he said was a lie,” Sherlock says loudly to cover the deafening white noise of panic in his ears. “You have to know that.”

“Sherlock, I-”

“You have to _know_ , John.”

Finally, Sherlock manages to get the offending articles off of John, bending to hurl them away with all his might, satisfied when they skitter a good distance across the floor.

“Sherlock!”

The roaring in Sherlock’s ears dies down, the blockage in his throat recedes. He can breathe easy again. He turns back to John, looking at him almost blindly – no observations or deductions beyond _whole, safe_ – before heading to pick up the gun again and then running through the door to the changing rooms after Moriarty.

He knows it’s hopeless even as he charges in there. It’s more of a check that he and John can relax for a moment rather than an attempt to chase and apprehend a criminal mastermind.

As he expected, Moriarty is long gone.

When he returns, John is slumped against the door of one of the changing cubicles. He’s squeezing his left hand with his right. Sherlock crouches down to his level at once, reaching out to grasp John’s shoulder in a futile attempt to ground him, to hold onto him.

“Are you going to travel?”

John shakes his head, but his face is twisted in a grimace of effort. “I’m calming down now. Is he gone?”

“We’re safe,” Sherlock says. “He’s-”

Sherlock stops dead and watches as John’s taut face slackens with horror. There is a red dot on John’s chest and, judging from John’s expression, he has a matching one.

John’s eyes are wide and frightened when he looks up from his own torso to meet Sherlock’s gaze. He shakes his left hand urgently before gripping Sherlock’s wrist with it, and Sherlock is overwhelmed with the most incongruous feeling of serenity. John is going to travel.

“Sorry, boys!” comes Moriarty’s exuberant voice from the opposite end of the pool. “I’m so changeable!”

“You’ll be safe,” Sherlock whispers, getting to his feet to face Moriarty and ignoring the frantic shaking of John’s head and the way John’s fingers pull at him to keep him down.

“Don’t-”

“It is a weakness with me,” Moriarty croons, “but, to be fair to me, it is my only weakness. What’s your weakness, Sherlock Holmes? I think I know.”

Sherlock once thought he had no weakness at all, but he knows now with everything in him that his only weakness is also his greatest strength, and also the greatest joy he’s ever known.

_Of course we will,_ said a future version of John. That John gave so many hints and all but promised they would be together in the future, so Sherlock has to trust that what he is about to do now is the right thing.

“It’s no weakness,” Sherlock says. “You were wrong about me, you know.”

“Oh?” Moriarty sounds bored now. “Was I, really?”

“You said I’d trade John’s life for mine in a heartbeat, but…” Sherlock draws the gun again and points it steadily at the jacket on the ground between him and Moriarty. “I’d sooner die here and now.”

Moriarty laughs. “We’ll all die if you do that, you moron.”

“Not John.”

“Sherlock,” John’s weak voice says from behind him. “Please, don’t do this.”

Sherlock looks over his shoulder, hoping the smile he gives John says everything that he can’t. “I should really tell you, if this is my last opportunity. I have to hope that it isn’t.”

“Tell me _what_?” John asks desperately.

Sherlock turns his head back to face Moriarty without answering. The hand holding the gun doesn’t waiver as he tenses his finger, ready to pull the trigger. His resolve does though.

“Oh hell,” Sherlock says with a roll of his eyes. “I might as well. John-”

And that’s when the tinny sound of ‘Staying Alive’ breaks the standoff.


	7. Saved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First things first, I AM SORRY. I've been something of a BBC/Moffat/Gatiss leaving you all hanging for so long. The fact is, I pretty much lost my enthusiasm for the show during the hiatus and that then applied to writing this. I've tried to keep this pretty canon compliant with only one MAJOR difference being responsible for any other changes. (Who would have thought we'd get so much Holmes family backstory this series? Not me! Oops.) So factor in me not being sure where Series 3 might go and exactly where my plot might go (now sorted, huzzah!) and you get the big gap. So, now that I've seen Series 3 and I'm feeling inspired again, I am back! 
> 
> A big thank you to you all for your continued interest in this story, all of your kind comments are of course the other thing that's compelled me to pick this back up. I'll probably be slow to answer you all now, but I _will_ do it.
> 
> I should include some warnings for this chapter. They include: **drug use, violence, and attempted rape.**
> 
> As you were.

_29 th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33)_

It’s something of an anti-climax. There he was, prepared to die for John, prepared to divulge the one secret of his heart rather than his head, and then… nothing. A ridiculous ringtone, a maddening half of a conversation, and then he was left with John looking at him as if he had betrayed him.

He doesn’t have time for it. He needs to figure out what Moriarty’s next move will be. He needs to know who just saved them, whether they are a friend or foe. There are questions that need answering and he can’t _think_ , he can’t, because John Watson is looking at him like that.

There will be time later to explain himself. Maybe he’ll even manage to convince John not to leave Baker Street, but it’s doubtful, not if John truly believes that Sherlock could have had one iota of involvement with him being shot in Afghanistan. Even if he believes that, he’ll want to leave if he knows, as he surely must now, how Sherlock feels for him.

 _Sherlock_ didn’t even know before tonight, not fully.

There will be time later to attempt to salvage their relationship, but the first thing he needs to do is ensure John’s safety. The game is on with Moriarty, and he’s going to need help if this goes where he thinks it will, where he knows it must.

He gets a cab alone. He leaves John waiting for another, with no idea where he might ask for it to take him. Probably somewhere far away from Sherlock.

Sherlock leans his head against the car window, closes his eyes and pictures London rushing by him. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know the mental picture is accurate.

He makes a call to his older brother.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30 th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)_

‘Life Goes On’ he types.

Then John sits, hands clasped and pressed against his mouth, and watches the typing cursor blink at him for a full ten minutes.

He should leave typing this up for another time. It hasn’t even been a full day since he was kidnapped and made to wear a bomb. Most people would need time to process that. Most _normal_ people would need to return to therapy and yet…

John feels okay about it. He’s about as confused as he’s ever been, but it’s not because his life was in danger. That’s happened to him plenty.

The cause of his turmoil lounges in a dressing gown, sipping tea in his chair a few scant feet from where John sits now as he tries and fails to type up a blog post in the hopes that it will help him work through what happened.

How can it though? He can’t write it down for the public that Moriarty made him say ‘I love you’ to Sherlock because he had the strange idea that it would affect him somehow. He can’t record the way that it _did_ affect him, the look that it put on Sherlock’s face.

There simply aren’t words. If John even pictures that expression for more than five seconds, it makes his stomach churn and his heart race.

For all that Sherlock is in the same room as him, he’s never felt more distant or closed-off to John.

After Moriarty left the pool, they got cabs home. Cabs, plural. Sherlock declared he needed to think, which was obviously true because they were saved by a mysterious phone call from a player Sherlock wasn’t even aware was on the board, but John would bet everything he had in the world that Sherlock also wanted some time alone to puzzle out how their next conversation would go.

Mainly because it’s a conversation they still haven’t had.

Sherlock hasn’t said a word to him since John arrived back at the flat. He just looked mildly surprised to see him, then went to his bedroom, closed the door, and didn’t emerge until this morning.

John’s not sure if Sherlock managed to sleep at all. (John’s not sure how much sleep Sherlock gets in general.)

His own night passed slowly. He went to bed when he realised (after an hour or so) that Sherlock wouldn’t be coming back out that evening. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to sleep, but he awoke from a nightmare at three in the morning, the usual camouflage uniforms and screams exchanged for designer suits and the smell of chlorine. As he lay awake after that, he had time to think about how he was certain that he’d closed his bedroom door when he came up earlier, not left it ajar.

This morning, in the cold light of day when everything makes more sense, he’s trying to look at it as Sherlock might. Sherlock’s methods – observation and inference.

Observations: Moriarty said that Sherlock thought he was in love with him. Moriarty told him that Sherlock had been searching for him before they met in January. Moriarty raised a theory of Mycroft and Sherlock organising for him to be shot. Sherlock wanted to sacrifice himself, certain that John would travel and be safe.

Inference: Sherlock really is in love with him, or Moriarty is just insane, sick, and twisted.

The trouble is, the latter is certainly true. If the inference really _is_ an ‘or’ statement, then he has his answer.

What if it could be an ‘and’ statement? Sherlock really isn’t the sociopath he claims to be. Sherlock isn’t a lot of the things he claims he is, and he’s quite a few of the things he claims he’s not.

_“I should really tell you, if this is my last opportunity.”_

“Tell me what, Sherlock?” John asks.

“Sorry?”

Sherlock has turned towards him at the sound of his voice after such a thick, heavy silence. The careful lack of any expression makes him more open than he thinks.

“At the pool, in that last moment before Moriarty’s phone went off, you were going to tell me something.”

Sherlock blinks a few times and John watches the muscle jump in his jaw.

“It was nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“It was a ploy; I was just stalling for time. I was giving you more time to travel.”

John leans back in his chair, regarding Sherlock’s own posture as he does. His back is straight; his shoulders are squared. He looks ready to march off to a crime scene.

“Are we going to talk about the actual issue here?”

The frustration has crept into his tone without him meaning it to. John massages his temples, still watching Sherlock as if he might get some clue from his body language as to what he’s actually thinking.

He has no idea how to interpret Sherlock staring steadily back at him, apparently at ease now.

“What ‘issue’?” Sherlock scoffs. “That asinine rubbish Moriarty was spouting to distract me? Honestly, John, I credited you with more intelligence than to buy into all of that.”

“Maybe it was the part where he said that you and your brother planned to have me _shot_ that made me question a few things.”

He doesn’t believe that though. That’s not even the issue. Why did he bring them off-topic again?

Sherlock is actually glaring at him now, a crueller, colder look than any he’s had directed at him before by Sherlock when he thought John was being slow or boring.

It’s a far cry from desperate hands ripping that vest from his body, from that desperate plea, _you have to know, John_.

He does know. Of course he does. He shouldn’t have brought this part up.

“I told you,” Sherlock says. “Everything he said was a lie.”

“I know.” The apologies are forming on his lips. “Sherlock, I-”

“I had nothing to do with your injury,” Sherlock talks over him, standing up. “And I have nothing further to say on the subject.”

Sherlock throws him another sub-zero glance before striding across the room to put his scarf and coat on.

“Where are you going?” John asks, and great, now the resignation is edging into his voice too. He sounds like he’s nagging.

No wonder Sherlock doesn’t answer.

When he hears the front door slam, John makes an echoing thud with his fist against the table.

The subsequent tingle in his hand isn’t caused by his violent outburst, as there’s an accompanying feeling of sickness.

John rolls his eyes.  “Not now,” he murmurs to himself. “Not fucking n-”

  
  


* * *

  
  
_23 rd April 2001 (John is 33, Sherlock is 20)_

John waits until he gets out of the alley to wince, clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left hand. Bloody hell, he’d forgotten how much punching someone in the face fucking _hurts_.

Behind him, the young student he’s just helped is still gaping at the unconscious mugger stripped to his underwear on the floor, probably unsure whether to be more stunned that a naked man just saved him by springing out of nowhere and rugby tackling his assailant to the ground, or that the naked man took the mugger’s clothes and then asked a series of strange, obvious questions.

John shifts his shoulders in his stolen clothes as he walks up the road. Sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, lovely. Even lovelier is the pervading scent of alcohol, brutality, and cigarette smoke. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and he’d rather not have to find his way through the dark streets of Cambridge with everything on display.

The best things he got from their friendly neighbourhood mugger were the shoes, definitely. They’re cheap trainers, nothing fancy, but the soles of his feet are the most vulnerable part of him when he travels, and he really doesn’t fancy a stray needle piercing his skin. That would be all he needs.

When he first arrived, it had still been light out and he’d ended up curling up behind a bin rather than attempting to leave the alley and go in search of clothes. He was likely to be arrested for public indecency before he could find some. So he went to sleep right there, safe in the knowledge that if he was meant to do something in this time period, then the action would come to him.

Sure enough, he stopped a student getting stabbed hours later. Not bad for a night’s work.

He’s not actually all that far from where Sherlock must be right now. The student in the alley told him that the year is 2001, the month is April, and that he’s in Cambridge, a short walk from Trinity College. Sherlock told him just last week that he went to Trinity, yawning and stretching after a night of being cramped up, hunched like a vulture over his laptop as he worked tirelessly on one of the cases (puzzles) to save Moriarty’s bomb victims.

John hadn’t understood the relevance at the time, but it makes sense now. He was feeding John the knowledge in anticipation of his visit. He probably worked out exactly which point in his life John was going to from John’s age and the scrawled notes in the margins of his John-journal.

Is it still anticipation if it’s already happened for Sherlock? John can’t keep track of his tenses and definitions anymore, he really can’t.

There was something guarded in Sherlock’s expression as he mentioned his university days. He’s always near unfathomable, but he was particularly poker-faced this time in his offhand comment. It made John feel nervous, because it was the exact same look that Sherlock gets when he’s going to attempt something stupid on his own without telling John about it. He had it the night of the pool incident when John left him alone. He’s not going to forgive himself for that one for a long time.

He’s coming up on the college now, and he can see straight away that the large wooden doors of the entrance are shut. How is he actually meant to get in to find Sherlock? He doesn’t think that he’ll just be let through the front gate, and the idea of loitering around and waiting for a student to come back so he can persuade them either to sneak him in or vouch for him to a porter is just distasteful.

How do things even work at a university as prestigious as Cambridge anyway? Do they have curfews? He’s pretty sure they do have porters that let you in, at least. But would the porter still be awake at… John looks at his watch (also taken from the mugger), which reads 15:31 and is blatantly wrong. It’s pitch dark and probably close to midnight by now.

As he goes to walk up to the gate, still deciding what to do, he hears singing coming from somewhere to his left. The song is unrecognisable, off-key and out of time as a male voice croons it out, the lyrics a slurred, garbled mess. John grins to himself and looks over to find a couple staggering up the road, a petite blonde girl just barely propping up a tall man with dreadlocks.

Drunken students back from a night out, perfect.

“Hey,” he calls out to them, “I need a favour!”

  
  
\----  


After finding out he was in totally the wrong place (“Sherlock’s over in The Wolfson Building, where we’re headed, come on”), he is now in the correct one at the very least. It’s a rough structure of concrete, glass and exposed brickwork, nothing at all like John would have pictured as accommodation for Cambridge students. It doesn’t seem to fit with the stunning architecture and grandeur of everything he’s passed so far.

His tour-guides, Lilah and James, are now safely ensconced in Lilah’s room after John ensured they got there without any major incidents. He left advising them both to drink plenty of water with another student watching out for them and went to continue his search.

He’s been told that Sherlock is five rooms down from Lilah, so John positions himself outside the appropriate closed door and raises his fist to knock on the wood. He’ll never know why, but he feels like a bucket of ice is dropped over him in that moment, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention. It’s pure instinct, the sort of feeling he would get in Afghanistan. A warning that something isn’t right. He’s had plenty of false alarms, but his instincts haven’t led him astray as many times as they’ve saved him.

Sherlock’s flat expression flashes through John’s mind, his reluctance to speak about university beyond the college he attended. What was it about this particular visit that had him worried and tight-lipped? Normally he’s smug because he knows something John doesn’t. Granted, that isn’t an unusual occurrence, but he can tell Sherlock has put up with a lot of vague hinting and outright refusal to give anything away from different versions of John throughout his childhood and adolescence. He definitely enjoys the fact that the tables have turned in the present.

So his reticence was out of the ordinary.

As John waits with his hand poised, he hears muffled noises from within the room. A voice that isn’t Sherlock’s.

Does Sherlock have someone with him? _With_ him, with him? As in…

A low moan drifts through the door and John’s stomach drops. That’s not pleasure. That was pain.

No longer caring about knocking, John turns the doorknob and barges straight in to find Sherlock laying on the bed, head twisted to one side, navy shirt open to reveal his pale, skinny chest. A man is straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.

“Who the fuck are you?” asks the man.

John doesn’t spare the man a second glance when he speaks because he’s looking at Sherlock, the uncomfortable angle of his head, his wide open eyes. Sherlock’s (usually keen, ever-roaming) quicksilver eyes are fixed, the pupils dilated and the colour of his iris only just discernible. The lights are on but Sherlock isn’t home.

And there is a man straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.

That’s when John loses it.

He strides across the room, and shoves the man off Sherlock with all his strength. He pushes so hard that he and the man go tumbling over the other side of the bed where John now sits on him, much the same way as the man been sitting on Sherlock, and lays into him. He punches and punches, and the man is trying to block his fists, trying to protect his face from the blows, but John just keeps hitting and hitting until his knuckles ache, until the man stops moving beneath him. (Until a good minute after the man stops moving beneath him.)

John breathes heavily through his nose, pulling back his fist to strike again when he hears a muffled whimper behind him. _Sherlock._

He stands up too fast, trembling from adrenaline, rage and sheer, blind panic, and turns back to Sherlock.

“Oh God, Sherlock,” he breathes, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand to take Sherlock’s pulse as the doctor in him takes over from the soldier. “What’s he given you?”

Sherlock doesn’t respond, still staring blindly. His radial artery constricts and dilates under John’s fingers, sluggish, weak. It’s proof he’s alive though, with a beating heart, and John will take that. He puts his ear to Sherlock’s mouth after checking it for any obstructions. Slow, shallow puffs of air intermittently moisten his cheek. Depressed respiration. Sherlock has had a high dose of _something_. Ketamine, at a guess. John doesn’t know whether to be more terrified of Sherlock’s immobile body and his sightless eyes, or whatever dissociative hallucinations that might be going on behind them. Sherlock being trapped in his own mind is dangerous at the best of times, let alone when a drug is altering his perception of reality.

John needs help.

There’s a mobile on the desk, an old Nokia. No touch screen, no colour, no apps or any of the other unnecessary gimmicks – all that matters is that it’s got a functioning number 9 key and John presses it three times with a thumb that slips against the plastic.

He bites out the details efficiently, thankful that his medical training is coming to the fore in a stressful situation, even as he ends the call with a plea for the ambulance to _hurry_. He looks down at Sherlock, grimacing at his ashen face, his sharp cheekbones. He’s thinner now than he is in the present. Sherlock looks like death warmed up, but he was probably this way to begin with before the bastard on the floor got to him.

_Christ, Sherlock, what’s happened to you?_

There’s an old bruise under Sherlock’s jaw, turned a faded yellow-brown colour, and John wants to ghost his fingers over it. He can’t though, not when Sherlock is so out of it like this. He knows a conscious Sherlock probably wouldn’t resist his touch, but there’s a man lying on the floor who was touching him while he was drugged, unable to move or talk or prevent it. John can’t be like that man now, whether Sherlock would be all right with it or not.

“Not long now,” he says aloud, resolving to talk to Sherlock until the ambulance arrives. “You’ll be okay, Sherlock. Everything will be okay.”

His own heart is racing, a feeling of sickness pushing it’s way up his chest and clogging his throat. Pins and needles suddenly erupt in his left hand and John wants to scream. He can’t travel. He can’t _leave_ , not now, not when Sherlock needs him most.

Inspiration hits him like lightning: the phone. He opens the contacts and finds a single number to call, praying that it will be Mycroft on the other end of the line and not a Chinese takeaway.

“What is it this time, dear brother?”

Thank God.

“Mycroft, it’s John.” There’s a pause. John holds the phone away from his ear and checks that they’re still connected. “Hello? Mycroft, are you there?”

“Who is this? And why do you have my brother’s phone?”

Shit. He’s forgotten that he hasn’t met Mycroft yet. “I’m- I’m a friend of Sherlock’s at uni. He’s in a bad way; he said to call you in an emergency.”

“And what exactly is a ‘bad way’?”

“In some kind of trance in his dorm, not moving and probably hallucinating after a large dose of ketamine. Oh, and he was nearly sexually assaulted, is that bad enough?”

Another pause. John grits his teeth and doesn’t bother to check the phone this time.

“You’re not a university friend,” Mycroft says eventually, and follows it up with: “I’m on my way.”

“I don’t know how much longer I can stay with him.”

“You’ll stay with him, _John_ , or there will be no place left on this earth that will be safe for you to crawl into and hide in. Do you understand?”

John ignores the threat. “Have you got someone watching over him here? An agent?”

“How-”

“Send them in now, and be sure to sack them later,” John says and disconnects the call.

Sherlock is in the same position on the bed, but his eyes are now continuously jerking to the left before swinging slowly back to the right. Nystagmoid movements. It’s a bad sign.

“Big brother’s on his way,” John tells him, “and a guard dog will be along in the meantime. I can’t stay, Sherlock, _god,_ I want to. You’ll be all right though, I know you will.”

A hulking figure in a suit steps through the door as John says it, breathing fast. Fast enough to give away the fact that he just ran here full pelt from God knows where.

“Mr Holmes,” the man begins to say, and John breathes a sigh of relief both at the concern in his tone – this man will take care of Sherlock – and at the sirens he can hear approaching. He stops fighting it and disappears.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_30 th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)_

John feels raw when he gets back, the urgency of his battle with himself lingering in his raised heart rate, his trembling hands. He’s slumped in the doorway of Sherlock’s bedroom, eyes closed and head tilted down, being watched by the man himself. He can feel it, the weight of Sherlock’s gaze on him in the strained silence of the room.

“John.”

Sherlock’s tone gives nothing away. John opens his eyes and looks up at him, finding Sherlock sat up in bed. He’s on top of the covers in his usual sleep-wear of a soft t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, illuminated only by the light coming from the laptop perched on his thighs.

The room is dark otherwise – John left mid-morning and he’s been gone for several hours.

Sherlock’s expression isn’t as dead as his voice, the worry etched into the lines of his face. He would have known before John left the time period he was going to, and now he’s worried about John’s reaction. Add to that their sort-of fight and Sherlock sort-of storming out and everything is a bit of a mess.

John isn’t even sure what his reaction _is._ He’s confused. He walked into that situation with no clue what was going on, he reacted through instinct while he was there, and now he’s back and he has to deal with it.

He’s got questions, perhaps he should start with the most important one.

“Were you all right after?”

There’s a pause where Sherlock reaches over to turn on his bedside lamp, shuts his laptop and then puts it down on the floor by the bed. In the splash of light, John remembers his current nude state. It occurs to him to be embarrassed, but he only really wonders if it makes him more or less threatening to Sherlock at this point in time, after he’s come back from… that.

He’s down to his skin, the last protective layer before blood, bone, and yielding, pulsating internal organs. Clothes _are_ something like armour, but taking them off doesn’t mean shedding your power. He may be naked, soft and ridiculous, but Sherlock is definitely the more vulnerable one right now.

Whilst his hand is still on the floor, Sherlock picks up one of his silk dressing gowns and throws it in John’s direction. He then laces his fingers together and rests them on his stomach. He shuts his eyes when John stands to cover himself.

“Yes,” he says. “I was all right. Mycroft sorted everything.”

John nods. He expected no less, but it’s not really answering the question. “Who was the man?”

“Someone on my course.”

It’s another non-answer. Sherlock doesn’t want to give away too much, as usual. He must know that John won’t give up though.

“Was he a friend? Before… before that, I mean.”

John ties the dressing gown and crosses the room to the bed, sitting down just on the edge, level with Sherlock’s knees. He wants to sit closer, but he’s seen the tension in his jaw and shoulders. He’s just seen a man preparing to do unspeakable things to Sherlock, and he’s not sure how he’ll be received, or how Sherlock might see him. Logically, nothing has changed but John’s knowledge. Sherlock is not a wilting flower who’s suddenly going to flinch away from any touch, but John still thinks better of getting too close.

“No. Just someone on my course. I didn’t have friends at university.” Sherlock speaks matter-of-factly, but John saw his face in the bank where Sebastian Wilkes worked when the man (the _prick_ ) said everyone at university hated him. John hates his own dismissive comment at the beginning of that conversation now, _colleagues_ , but he can’t take it back. He can’t make that experience better for Sherlock, no matter how much he wants to.

“He drugged you?”

There was a period of time in Sherlock’s life when Sherlock drugged himself, John can’t help but think. Was this one of those occasions?

“I didn’t take it willingly, if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t-”

“Of course you did. Rightly so.”

There’s a soft rustle of fabric behind him. John turns to see Sherlock pulling his t-shirt over his head and then removing his pyjama bottoms. John looks away quickly, flushing. Sherlock is obviously completely unabashed when naked, the same as he is clothed in his expensive suits. He’s a long stretch of pale skin, dark hair and a few sparse scars and freckles. Nothing to be ashamed of, John would say. Bodies are just bodies, when it comes down to it. He only really gets embarrassed himself if he thinks _other people_ are embarrassed. Sherlock’s lack of inhibition is… refreshing.

Another rustle - Sherlock getting under the covers.

“You can sit comfortably if we have to have this conversation, John. And stop thinking so much, it’s annoying.”

John doesn’t move, keeping a good foot of space separating them from bodily contact. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he blurts out, because it’s on his mind. “I don’t believe Moriarty. Of course I don’t.”

With a nod, Sherlock rolls onto his side and puts his back to John.

“I don’t remember a lot of it,” he says quietly after a few moments. “Only what Mycroft and his agent told me afterwards. Mycroft told me about the phone call, I knew it could only be you.”

“He was on top of you and you were so out of it,” John says, voice hushed to match Sherlock’s. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much in my entire life, and not only that, I wanted him to _suffer_ for what he’d done, for what he was going to do. I _would_ have killed him, but you needed me, and you came first.”

Sherlock turns back over to look at John then, losing the tension in his body. One corner of his mouth pulls back, a sad imitation of a smile. An acknowledgement, maybe even an offering of gratitude. “I stopped caring about it all because I couldn’t remember it, and so it wasn’t worth thinking about. The ketamine was the worst thing, really. By all rights, the things I saw should have put me off drugs forever.”

John’s hands clench reflexively. “What did you see?”

“I deleted as much as I could. I really don't remember much of it now, besides the feeling it gave me.”

“Not good?” John asks softly, feeling like his heart is lodged in his throat.

Sherlock stays silent; his eyes flicker and then shut. He rolls onto his side again. “Goodnight, John.”

It’s an end to the conversation.

That night, John dreams again. Needles and beeping monitors and hospital beds and dorm room beds and Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.

His door isn’t ajar when he wakes with a silent scream.


	8. Complications/Misunderstandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in one week. I'm starting to feel like Sherlock Series 3. Dear readers, it is very gratifying and humbling to hear how much you are enjoying this story. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy this latest part. 
> 
> Scandal is possibly my favourite episode, particularly when it comes to the intricacies of John and Sherlock's relationship. It's been my favourite part to adapt so far! There's so much material though that it needs to be split up!

_15 th September 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)_

It’s been around three and a half months when it happens.

During those three and a half months, Sherlock and he have been getting back into the swing of things, whatever that may mean. They’re back to solving cases and, thanks to his blog, they’ve become something of an overnight sensation, complete with camera flashes, headlines, and ridiculous hats that everyone now seems to think they wear every time they leave the flat.

Hat-man and Robin. John wishes the press were more imaginative with their titles. He at least _thinks_ about his ones. (He’s still quite proud of The Speckled Blonde, whatever Sherlock may have to say about it.)

They’re also back to their unconventional, mostly un _spoken_ friendship, getting along almost as they did before Moriarty strapped a bomb to John’s chest. It’s been three and a half months without a single mention of what Moriarty said or what he made John say at the pool.

There may not have been a _mention_ of the incident between them, but that’s not to say there haven’t been _thoughts_ about it. John gets stuck on a different part of that night nearly every day. He tries to work out Moriarty’s reasoning behind all that he said, he tries to make sense of the look in Sherlock’s eyes when that first laser point must have positioned itself over the front of the vest, over John’s heart.

He thinks in circles and he gets nowhere.

Visits to the past have been infrequent in the meantime, but he knows he’s already become far too attached to all of the younger versions of Sherlock he’s met now. There’s something inexplicably wonderful about leaving behind a short-tempered Sherlock who refuses to be interrupted while thinking and finding himself in a wildflower meadow with a boy who never tires of seeing him. A boy who lacks Sherlock’s sharp edges and cold silences. A boy who steals the cook’s cat because he’s bored, with not even a _notion_ of, say, shooting a wall instead. A boy who steals the cook’s cat seemingly just to play with it for an afternoon, rather than to experiment on it or dissect it as he probably would in the present.

The thing he remembers most vividly from his last visit is the way Sherlock smiled so shyly, so sweetly at him, aged just seven, as John cleaned a graze on his knee, gave him the list of future visits to write down (having finally memorised it well enough himself), and listened to him talk quite neutrally about how he knew his father was having an affair.

He cherishes those memories when Sherlock is being an arse now. He knows that Sherlock almost _worshipped_ him, once upon a time, and he knows that Sherlock lied to him when they met about how close they must have been in his childhood.

The odd part is: most of the moments when Sherlock is being an arse typically correspond with when John has just come back from a visit.

If he didn’t know better, he would say that Sherlock was simply embarrassed to remember his younger self and the admiration he held for John. But they’ve been flatmates and friends for nearly six months now, and he’s starting to believe that he knows Sherlock. He knows what Sherlock looks like when he’s hiding something. Or, rather, he knows how Sherlock _acts_ when he wants to hide something: he’s either deliberately difficult and engineers an argument to deflect attention from the matter at hand or he just point-blank refuses to talk about it.

Most of the time, he doesn’t want to talk about John’s visits to him. He cuts John off when he tries with a dismissive wave of his hand and an irritable murmur: “I know, I was there.”

Add Sherlock’s reticence and mood swings to John’s growing picture of their relationship up to the point where he actually _met_ Sherlock at Bart’s and it all makes thinking about the pool incident that much harder, because he could start to get the wrong idea about just what Sherlock is hiding, he really could.

His own reaction to that isn’t something he thinks about at all.

Not until it’s been three and a half months and a helicopter takes him to Buckingham Palace, that is.

  
  
\----

When he arrives at the Palace and finds Sherlock still clad only in his bed sheet, he’s not surprised. He _wishes_ he could say he were. The surprising thing is the way John starts to wonder what might be _under_  the sheet.

 “Are you wearing any pants?”

In their time as flatmates, he’s realised that, despite Sherlock’s never-ending supply of shirts and designer suits, he’s far more comfortable lounging around in pyjamas (evenings when he doesn’t go out) or in his bed sheets (mornings when he doesn’t go out). He’s also discovered that, despite Sherlock’s fondness for his pyjamas, he actually sleeps nude.

It can only mean one thing.

“No.”

It’s wildly inappropriate, but they laugh like schoolboys together and John writes off his bizarre attention to any outlines in the sheet as sleep deprivation after Dublin. It’s been a busy two days, sue him.

Then Mycroft steps on the sheet and it falls away, right down to Sherlock’s waist. Aside from the time at the end of May when he arrived back from Cambridge in Sherlock’s bedroom, it’s as much of Sherlock’s body as John has really seen properly (had the opportunity to look at properly), even in six months of living in each other’s pockets. He can’t blame sleep deprivation on the way his eyes linger on Sherlock’s broad shoulders, the moles littering the pale skin of his back, the glimpse of the soft swell at the bottom of his spine…

John alters his stance, straightens his own spine, and looks away while Mycroft hisses at Sherlock to put his clothes on. He breathes hard through his nose, palms sweating and heart racing.

Sherlock is attractive, anyone can see that, straight man or otherwise. Sherlock turns heads when he walks into the room because the aura surrounding him is one of force and purpose. He’s undeniably the most charismatic person John has ever met, all rudeness aside. Even if his unusual face and wiry body aren’t conventionally attractive, there’s just something about him.

He’s a paradoxical mix of elegance and strength. His features are delicate but harsh, from the proud tilt of his chin to the line of his nose to those ridiculously sharp cheekbones. He moves like water, graceful and smooth and unstoppable. Even his hands, so adept at handling his chemistry equipment, so gifted to be able to wring a torturous melody from his violin, are capable of bending the poker by their fireplace.

His mind is beautiful, but his tongue is acidic. His lines of deduction are brilliant and he goes through them all at a breakneck speed, coming to a conclusion that’s near miraculous when all he had to go on was something as apparently insignificant as a single hair out of place.

At the end of the day, Sherlock is just magnetic, and everyone around him is an iron filing. John came to terms long ago with his attraction to Sherlock, content in the knowledge that other people, men and women, felt it too. It’s not a problem because it’s not a sexual sort of attraction.

(Although Lestrade may once have admitted, under duress and also under the influence, that he had Sherlock on his _list_. They may have toasted this and then ‘forgot’ about it afterwards.)

His racing heart this time isn’t in line with that safe variety of attraction. Nor was the drop in his stomach.

He thinks about how many times Sherlock must have seen him naked. He wonders how it makes him feel, _if_ it makes him _feel_ anything.

Sherlock puts his clothes on and John breathes easy again until Mycroft decides it’s a good time to have a dig at his younger brother.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he says as Sherlock shuffles the pictures of Irene Adler in his hands and contemplates her being a dominatrix. “It’s to do with sex.”

“Sex doesn’t alarm me,” Sherlock retorts at once and Mycroft smirks.

“How would you know?”

John watches Sherlock as he relaxes back into the sofa, quirking an eyebrow and giving his brother an answering smirk of his own.

“Oh,” he says, “I know.”

John coughs, loud and obvious in the stunned silence following that low remark. He’s choking on his last mouthful of tea because Jesus, _Jesus._ Ever since their first conversation of girlfriends, boyfriends, and everything in between, Sherlock has shown every sign of being as completely disinterested in both sexes and in relationships in general as he said he was on that first evening together. Extrapolating from a few choice comments and a few blank looks here and there, and John was certain that Sherlock was celibate, and either a virgin or at the least very inexperienced.

Seems he was wrong. That, or Sherlock is just goading his brother, which is very likely.

Ordinarily, Sherlock would have given him an unimpressed look for such an undignified outburst, but he hasn’t broken his staring match with Mycroft, who looks both shocked (it’s subtle but there in the slightly raised eyebrows) and faintly disgusted (the curl of his upper lip).

“Finally, then,” Mycroft says after a moment, flicking a completely unreadable glance in John’s direction before looking back to his brother.

“I’m disappointed to hear you didn’t already know.” Sherlock tuts and Mycroft’s eyes narrow further. He opens his mouth to reply but Sherlock cuts him off.

“John,” he says without turning his head, “you might want to put that cup back in your saucer now.”

John looks down to where his hand is frozen, cup half-raised from earlier when he choked.

“Right, yeah.”

“Back to the woman, if you please, Mycroft.”

 

* * *

  
  
_6 th January 2011 (Sherlock is 30, John is 36)_

Birthdays mean very little to Sherlock Holmes, along with holidays like Christmas and New Year, which have both just passed. People place so much significance on dates on the calendar. Pointless.

John doesn’t know it’s his birthday, or he might not have gone out on a date tonight. Or perhaps he would have out of lingering annoyance after Sherlock was the cause of the spectacular failure of his relationship with Jeanette. John moves quickly, she only dumped him on Christmas Eve.

Sherlock spends the evening quietly, dodging a phone call from his mother, not expecting one from his brother. No one else knows and, besides John, no one else _cares_ , so he begins to think he’s safe from any misplaced good intentions or disruptions.

He’s wrong.

Halfway through answering (dismissing) the cries for help that have accumulated on his website, Sherlock hears a muffled thump that sounds like someone flopping down onto the sofa.

He looks up, expecting a sour-faced John returned from a date gone bad.

He finds John, but not the one he’s expecting. He’s naked for one thing.

“Clothes upstairs,” Sherlock says without missing a beat, and returns to his typing. “Age?”

“Hello, Sherlock, how are you? Oh I’m fine, Sherlock, thanks for asking.” The amused reply decreases in volume and becomes distant as John heads up to his room to dress. “And thirty-six, if you must know.”

Thirty-six, so younger than the John who had sex with him last April. Unlikely that he’ll get a repeat performance then, considering how that John was unaware at the time that he _would_ have sex with Sherlock before the John of Sherlock’s present.

Sherlock grins at the memory.

There’s a soft, distinctive set of footfalls as John comes back downstairs and loiters in the doorway, fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt. It’s plain white, one that the present John wouldn’t usually wear without a button-up shirt over the top.

“Happy birthday, Sherlock,” he says. Sherlock’s head snaps up from his computer screen, and John smiles at his surprised expression. “You told me before I left that I was coming back to a special day. Can I give you your present?”

“You can’t travel with anything,” Sherlock says, a frown wrinkling his brow.

John’s smile becomes wider. “I managed to keep my mouth with me though. I’m told it’s quite talented.”

He walks into the kitchen where he leans across the table and gently shuts the lid of Sherlock’s laptop, giving him plenty of time to either protest or free his fingers. Sherlock says nothing, and removes his fingers from the keys in a slow drag, holding John’s heated gaze as he does.

“What do you-” he starts, and John shakes his head to cut him off.

“This will help you,” he says. “Trust me?”

Sherlock does, of course. He stands up and John comes around the back of the table to meet him, walking right into his personal space as he stands close enough that Sherlock can feel the warmth radiating off his body through his clothes.

John reaches out and lays a hand on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, lacing his fingers through the curls there. He tugs until Sherlock walks forward, until Sherlock is pressing him against the kitchen counter next to the sink, and then he keeps tugging until Sherlock’s mouth meets his.

Sherlock pulls back before the kiss can get underway and John gives him a quizzical, disappointed look that turns into one of satisfaction as Sherlock lifts him to sit on the kitchen counter (with a loud crashing sound as he pushes mugs, dishes, and chemistry equipment out of the way) and comes to stand between John’s open legs. They’re more level now.

John leans forward, placing his left hand where he had it before to pull Sherlock’s head back down to his and presses their lips together again. The kiss is firm and dry as John sets the pace, brushing his mouth teasingly over Sherlock’s, moving his head this way and that as though he can’t decide the best angle.

His free hand finds its way to Sherlock’s waist, splaying over his hip, and the hand twisted in his hair carefully extricates itself and goes to rest on the opposite side. His thumbs sweep over Sherlock’s hipbones repeatedly, and Sherlock opens his mouth to let out a long, shaky breath.

John lets him breathe for a moment, moving his hands around to Sherlock’s lower back, clutching the silky fabric of his shirt between his fingers one moment, dipping them just below the waistband of Sherlock’s trousers the next.

“Happy birthday,” he says, right against Sherlock’s lips, his voice pitched deliberately low.

“It is now,” Sherlock agrees.

Sherlock is the one to initiate things the next time, kissing John deeply while his own hands roam before coming to rest on John’s waist, urging him closer.

Their lips move slowly, tongues meeting and sliding against each other as they kiss for an amount of time that Sherlock loses track of after the first minute. When they’re together like this, he doesn’t have to think beyond what he’s feeling. He feels surrounded, overwhelmed. He feels as if he might come around to birthdays if this is going to be the sort of gift he starts receiving.

He’s just scraping his teeth over John’s lower lip and debating whether or not he should lift John off the counter and carry him to bed (timelines be damned) when he hears it:

“Oh my God.”

Sherlock freezes, eyes open wide at the familiar voice that can’t possibly come from the man in front of him with his mouth occupied as it is. He pulls back just enough that his mouth comes free with a wet noise that’s positively _obscene_ in the silence after John spoke.

_John._

“Shit, sorry,” the voice continues. “I had no idea you’d have someone- I had no idea there _was_ someone- I’m. I’ll just go up to my own room and leave you… No, actually, I think I’ll go out again and I’ll- I’ll leave you to it. Oh _God_. Sorry, really.”

Sherlock doesn’t move until he hears the door slam, at which point he shoves himself away from John and staggers backwards until his back hits the kitchen table.

“That should do it,” John says as he hops down so his feet are on the floor again, breathing heavily and rubbing a contemplative thumb over his red, kiss-swollen lower lip.

“You just saw yourself-”

“No,” John holds out a placating hand, “I just saw you with your back to me, kissing a man – could have been any man, I don’t have a clue at this point – and then I left in a fit of confused jealousy.”

Sherlock had been covering John with his body, their heads close enough together that the present John wouldn’t have been able to make out his features. _Someone,_ John said, _I had no idea there was someone_.

How long is he going to have to put up with John’s misapprehension for?

“You said this would help me,” he says. “What was this then, some sort of catalyst to get you to realise your feelings for me?”

John nods. “And after everything with Irene Adler, at this point in time, I really needed that kick up the arse. I’ll be obsessing over seeing you actually kissing someone for _weeks_ now.” He gives a grimace and shrug. “Not my finest hour.”

Oh brilliant, so he’s going to have a jealous, oblivious John on his hands, and he can’t tell him the truth. Or can he?

“I don’t suppose-”

“No, Sherlock, you can’t tell me. I have to figure things out for myself.”

Sherlock scoffs and folds his arms, but he knows better than to argue by now about the natural order of things. Free will, what a funny notion.

“So,” he says after a pause, “about that talented mouth of yours…”

John smiles, but it’s rueful rather than promising. He holds up his left hand and waves it, and Sherlock sighs in resignation. “Sorry. It won’t be long now. This helps, really. I just have to sort myself out first.”

“How long?”

John angles his head to one side and raises an eyebrow that very clearly asks: _Really?_

“Come on,” he says. “Don’t make me say it, I know how you hate it when I do.”

“Yes, it would be telling, I know.” Sherlock huffs out his displeasure. “Fine. I understand.”

There’s a brief silence as they regard each other from across the kitchen. John’s t-shirt is deliciously crumpled, Sherlock thinks, and he resolves to go look in a mirror once John is gone to see just how ruffled _he_ looks right now. Such a shame, such a dreadful shame.

John won’t tell him how long it will be before his John finally gets his act together, but he can facilitate things. Starting by not fixing his hair or clothes and waiting for John to come home and find him in this state. Maybe he should arrange himself on the sofa, artfully drape himself over it in some provocative pose?

“Go easy on me,” John says with a wince, as if reading his mind. “Now that you know it’ll be soon.”

Sherlock smiles, shark-like. “Oh John, the fact that you’ve even _asked_ means you know I’m not going to do that.”

Provocation will be the key over the next few weeks, or however long it takes. Oh, don’t let it be more than a few weeks, Sherlock isn’t sure he can take it anymore. It’s like he’s constantly balanced on a wire. He’s always teetering just on the edge of _something_ , just ready to fall over. But he needs to take John with him.

He’s waited, and he’s done with the waiting game now. It’s his turn.

“Worth a try,” John says as he fades out. He’s grinning as he goes.


	9. Exposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quite a bit going on this chapter, hope it's not too busy!

_15 th September 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)_

“So what’s the plan?” John asks.

Sherlock, after nearly an hour of cycling through all his weird assortment of costumes and outfits, sits calmly at his side in the cab, wearing his usual suit and coat. John can’t fathom his reasoning behind that.

“We know her address.”

“What, you want to just ring her doorbell? Pop in for a cuppa?”

Sherlock smiles, with too many teeth on show and too much crinkling around his eyes for John to feel any warmth from it. If anything, it’s one of Sherlock’s more _chilling_ looks.

“Just here, please,” he says, raising his voice to be heard by the cab driver.

He turns the smile on John. “Time to add a splash of colour.”

Sherlock gets out of the car, long legs quickly taking him away from John who rolls his eyes, pays the cabbie, and follows after.

“Are we here?” he asks when he catches up to Sherlock.

“Two streets away, but it’ll do.”

“For what?”

Sherlock makes a gesture at the left side of his face, high on his cheekbone. “Punch me in the face.”

“Punch you?” John echoes.

“Yes, punch me. In the face.” He gestures helpfully again, looking irritated. It makes two of them – John’s starting to come around to the idea. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I always hear ‘punch me in the face’ when you’re speaking, but it’s usually subtext.”

Lately though, he’s been thinking of anything _but_ punching Sherlock in the face. This is ridiculous. He’s not going to do it.

“Oh, for God’s _sake_.”

A sharp burst of pain blooms across his left cheek. Sherlock hit him. When he opens his eyes after reeling from the blow, Sherlock is bracing himself for retaliation and looking smug.

Oh, he’s going to do this.

He punches Sherlock back, but even as he does it, something feels off. This isn’t how he fights.

Sherlock groans as he picks himself back up off the ground, pressing his fingers to the cut on his cheek. Exactly over where he had gestured.

“Thank you,” he says as he stands up, “that was-”

John isn’t listening though. As he looks down at his stinging knuckles, he sees it’s his right, non-dominant hand that he struck Sherlock with. He hit Sherlock with his weaker hand.

Jesus, he’s further gone than he even realised, isn’t he?

The thought makes him surge forward, barrelling into Sherlock and sending them both right back down to the ground. He lands awkwardly on top of Sherlock, feels the breath get forcibly pushed out of Sherlock’s lungs as _he_ lands awkwardly on his back.

It feels like it hurt. Sure enough, Sherlock’s face is contorted with pain when John looks down on him, and his eyes are screwed shut.

_Good_ , John thinks as his own cheek throbs. His intention now is to vent a bit of his frustration with Sherlock. He wants to get a few good hits in to get over Sherlock’s prickly nature of late and his own inability to sort out his confused feelings since the pool, and he wants Sherlock to get a few shots in return to assuage his guilt over it all.

Those are his intentions, up until Sherlock opens his eyes and instead of continuing their fight, his arms and legs remain stock-still. His lashes dip, his chin tilts ever so slightly (and probably unconsciously) upwards. John’s eyes are inexplicably drawn to his parted lips as he pants for breath, his flushed cheeks and the way gravity has drawn a thin line of blood away from the cut on his left cheekbone. All of a sudden, John doesn’t feel like Sherlock is close enough to punch. The thought that flashes through his mind – a bright, loud siren – is that Sherlock is close enough to _kiss_.

Rather than confronting this thought and the muddle that come with it, he hits Sherlock again.

 

* * *

  
  
 _15 th September 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33)_

There’s something very reassuring about being able to look at John Watson and know everything about him.

_Two day shirt_ – John dressed in a hurry this morning for the case after getting back from a conference in Dublin the night previous.

_Electric not blade_ – not as close a shave, but John _was_ trying to be quick.

_Date tonight_ – two day shirt but new shoes. The girl with the dog, again. It’s going nowhere. Sherlock hasn’t even bothered to scare this one away, John’s doing a fine job of that by himself.

_Night out with Stamford_ – he was speaking at the conference. Sherlock knew when John announced the trip that it would end in drinking. How dull.

_Hasn’t phoned sister_ – he’s not even going to touch that one, save to perhaps bring it up as a distraction at another time when John inevitably tries to broach the subject of that ‘fight’ in the alley.

_New toothbrush_ – he already made that deduction when he was trying and failing not to stare at John’s lips earlier. The oddest thing is, he could swear John was staring right back.

_Anxious_ – that left hand clenching will always give him away. Before the alley, he’d have written it off as being about that date, but now…

He shakes his head. Another time. He looks back to Irene Adler, her naked body so different and inscrutable compared to John’s. She’s nearly hairless for a start, the sparse body hair that she has darker and softer than John’s. She has yielding, enigmatic swells and curves where John is unfaltering, straightforward bone and muscle.

He much prefers the aesthetic of the male body, he decides. Even the woman’s perfume and makeup put him off, covering up and hiding the person she is underneath.

It’s a perfect analogy for why he can’t get a read on her, he supposes. His slight mental block when it comes to the opposite sex is not to his advantage for once.

Lay her out on a slab of metal in Bart’s morgue and this would be far simpler he thinks with a frown.

“Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr Holmes?” she asks. “However hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait.”

“You think I’m a vicar with a bleeding face?”

Irene cocks her head to one side and considers him, pursing her red lips as if in sympathy for him. “No, I think you’re damaged, delusional, and your life revolves around another being. In your case, it’s John.”

Sherlock blinks once. His only concession to the shock of hearing that come out of her mouth. He unfastens the top buttons of his shirt, raising an eyebrow to signal for her to go on. He’s confident his actions look casual, unaffected.

“Oh, don’t worry. He loves you back. I mean, if _I_ had to punch that face, I’d avoid your nose and teeth too.”

They both look to John who clenches his left hand around the napkin he’s still holding along with the bowl of water in his right. He forces a brittle laugh.

“Haha. Could you put something on, please? Anything at all. A napkin?”

“Why?” Irene asks. “Are you feeling… exposed?”

Sherlock stands up, making himself the tallest in the room again to combat the fact that _he_ hasn’t felt this exposed since the pool. She’s undoing all his work since then to get them back on an even keel.

“I don’t think John knows where to look,” he says, bringing them back to the current situation. He holds out his coat to Irene, but she ignores it in favour of stalking over to John.

John’s eyes flick away from her to hold Sherlock’s gaze, wordlessly asking for help.

“No,” she says, “I think he knows _exactly_ where.”

Well, Sherlock thinks. That’s interesting.

 

* * *

  
  
 _16 th September 2010 (John is 33 and 35, Sherlock is 29)_

At around half past midnight, John gives up any hope of sleep. There’s too much going around his brain, and if he goes over the frantic way that Sherlock shouted he didn’t know the safe’s code when there was a gun at the back of his neck one more time then he might go insane.

His thoughts lay downstairs of course, with Sherlock sleeping off whatever cocktail of drugs Irene Adler gave him. He was dead to the world last time John checked in on him, but there’s still a nagging fear that he’ll choke on his own vomit and become _literally_ dead to the world.

John sighs, throws his covers off, and quietly goes to the sitting area where he drags a chair with him to sit on because seating himself on Sherlock’s bed to watch him sleep for a few hours is out of the question. It’s one of the wooden ones from the dining table, uncomfortable enough that he shouldn’t fall asleep during his vigil, if his thoughts leave him alone long enough that he’s capable of sleep, that is.

He knocks on Sherlock’s bedroom door lightly before entering when there is no answer.

Sherlock is lying on his front now, rather than his side as John left him earlier, face mashed against the pillow, mouth open. His snuffled, steady inhalations and exhalations are just shy of snoring.

He’s reminiscent of his younger self like this, vulnerable and soft and human.

John smiles to himself and sets his chair down at a safe distance from the bed. He takes out his phone, clicking it over to silent mode while he remembers. The screen lights up and he cups a hand over it, looking over to Sherlock reflexively. As expected, Sherlock slumbers on.

_Susan (3 missed calls)_

_(3 voicemail messages)_

_(4 text messages)_

Shit. John forgot about their date and when he got home he left his phone somewhere while he and Lestrade attended to Sherlock. He hasn’t looked at it until now.

He rubs a hand across his forehead and down over his eyes, blowing out a rueful breath. He’s an arsehole.

“You’re an arsehole.”

The voice comes from behind him in the doorway and John turns his head so fast his neck aches. There’s a naked version of himself looking back at him.

“Jesus,” John says.

“ _Jesus_ ,” echoes the other John dryly. He struts across the room to Sherlock’s wardrobe where he picks out Sherlock’s favourite blue dressing gown and wraps himself in it while John watches, gaping at the audacity.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Can’t really help it,” the other John laughs softly. “You should know that. What the hell are _you_ doing?” The other version of him looks pointedly at Sherlock and then back to him. “Are you pulling an Edward Cullen?”

John gets the reference only because of Susan, funnily enough. She loves those ridiculous books.

The comparison makes him bristle. “No,” he snaps. “I don’t know if you remember, but we _are_ a doctor and Sherlock here-”

“Has been given a safe compound, we had it confirmed. The Woman, right?”

John nods, jaw tight. He's on his guard now. If he knows about Irene Adler, that means this is a future version of him.

“There’s absolutely no need for you to be sitting here, then.” The other John walks across to sit on the edge of Sherlock’s bed, level with his waist. He leans over Sherlock then, brushing a stray curl back from his forehead, smiling gently down at him.

The tender gesture and expression make John’s stomach twist. “But you did it anyway,” he retorts.

“That I did,” other-John says, not looking away from Sherlock. After a long moment of silence, he straightens up and regards John coolly again. “You really ought to wise up a bit.”

As he finishes the comment, he’s gone as suddenly as he arrived. The dressing gown slides off the bed and pools on the floor.

Glaring at nothing in particular, John immediately takes his place on the bed, unsure why he now feels the need to look at Sherlock after the other John touched him. He looks fine, still breathing deeply and evenly. His eyes move rapidly beneath paper thin eyelids – dreaming whatever it is that Consulting Detectives dream about. John hopes it’s a challenging murder, something he’ll enjoy. He stifles a laugh and brushes him thumb over the cut on Sherlock’s cheekbone, ostensibly to check it’s healing. As he does, he notices the scarlet lipstick smudge at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. He frowns at it in confusion, and then recalls spying Sherlock’s coat hanging on the bedroom door.

Irene Adler has been here.

Brow still furrowed, he rubs carefully at the mark until it’s gone, sure that Sherlock won’t wake from such a deep sleep. All the while, his heart thuds possessive and wild in his chest. _How dare she_.

With the added concern that the flat isn’t as safe as they think it is, John doesn’t leave Sherlock’s side until well after the sun rises.

 

* * *

  
  
 _24 th December 2010 (Sherlock is 29)_

It’s snowing again as he stares at the frozen scene outside of the hospital corridor. John will be delighted – he regaled Sherlock when he was nine with tales of the Christmases he had as a child, how he longed for snow every year. Sherlock caught him earlier today, before the whole sorry business with the phone and the body, looking out of the window of their front room with awe as the first flakes began to fall from the pregnant sky.

The joy was laced throughout his body, obvious even from behind. That was when Sherlock had to get his violin out, suddenly keen to play trite carols, to fill the flat with warmth and cheer on a holiday he held no particular love for.

It’s their first Christmas together. It’s the first Christmas Sherlock has cared about since he was four years old. Having John around has changed everything, even if he still disappears to the past every now and then. Sherlock tries not to be jealous of his past-selves. After all, they probably need John’s presence more than he does. Especially _because_ of the gift he got when he was four.

A cigarette appears at his shoulder.

“Just the one,” says Mycroft.

“Why?”

“Merry Christmas.”

It’s clearly a trick, but Sherlock takes the offered item gladly.

He should never think back to that gift, really, it only reminds him of a time when he was weak. Compromised. John fixed that problem elegantly, even if he did compromise Sherlock in other ways.

“Smoking indoors, isn’t that one of those… one of those law things?”

Mycroft lights the cigarette without any fuss. That’s one of the things Sherlock can appreciate about him, at least.

“We’re in a morgue,” he says tonelessly. “There’s only so much damage you can do. I’m not sure the same can be said about the damage being done to you though, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blows the smoke out of his lungs on a huffed, derisive laugh. “What are you talking about?”

“Nearly a year now, isn’t it? You and John.”

“Oh, I see. You’ve been dying to ask since the Palace, haven’t you?”

“I don’t need to ask. I know you’re not… together.” Mycroft says the word in the same way he might describe something he stepped in. “I can only assume you’ve had some sort of indiscretion with a future version of him.”

Sherlock smirks. “You assume correctly, although it’s none of your business.”

“You _are_ my business. It falls to me to ensure you don’t ruin yourself through sentiment, all for a man who barely seems to perceive even the slightest notion of all that you feel for him.”

Ah, the question of him being _ruined_ again. They’ve had this conversation many times, but Sherlock thought they were done with it the last time when he was twenty-five and threatened his brother with actual bodily harm if he didn’t use his resources to help him find John.

_Ruined._ Honestly, it’s as if Mycroft thinks of him as some virtuous maiden about to be debased by a philanderer.

A wailing sort of cry comes from the end of the corridor. Both brothers turn towards the noise and take in the family, sobbing and holding onto one another as they undoubtedly receive bad news.

“They all care so much,” Mycroft observes mildly. “It’s not an advantage, Sherlock. Would that be you, brother mine,” he gestures at the family, “if it had been John in Miss Hooper’s freezer tonight?”

Sherlock flicks the cigarette to the floor and instantly shoves Mycroft up against the window, forearm across his throat. “Brother mine?” he repeats mockingly, applying pressure. “That better not be a threat.”

Mycroft struggles to speak, but Sherlock holds him tightly. “If it was,” he continues, “know that should you ever _act_ on it, then you will be the next inhabitant of one of those freezers.”

He relaxes his arm, releasing Mycroft to cough and put a hand to his throat, attempting to regain his composure.

“I see your attachment is making you paranoid, as well,” Mycroft says, with a pleasant, ailing rasp to his voice now.

“You only ever say ‘brother mine’ when it’s a threat, Mycroft. It’s not a good day to threaten me.”

Mycroft raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, still rubbing at his throat. “I can see that.”

“You’d be wise to remember it.”

Sherlock grinds the heel of his shoe over the glowing remnant of his cigarette, somewhat unnecessarily, but he’s never been able to resist a few dramatics.

It gets him a withering glare from his brother. Point made.

As he turns to leave, Mycroft calls out to him. “How did you know she was dead?”

“She had an item in her possession, one she said her life depended on. She chose to give it up.”

“And where is that item now?”

 Sherlock merely offers him a wry twist of his lips and walks away.

“Merry Christmas, Mycroft,” he says, without looking back.

“And a happy New Year,” Mycroft answers, a tinge of sad disappointment to the words.

Sherlock thinks on that inflection later when he composes a melody with shades of unrequited love ( _con amore, con dolore_ ), loss ( _ritardando, diminuendo_ ), and longing ( _lacrimoso, ma non troppo_ ).

Mycroft, nuisance that he is, will never fully understand. Sherlock tried so hard to be like him as a child. He tried to be as smart, as logical, as detached. It was never good enough for his older brother. Then he met John, and John brought so much emotion, so much colour into Sherlock’s life and his upbringing. He shudders to think what he might have become without John’s influence. Without John’s patience, his acceptance, his love.

That’s what the melody is about. He names it _The Illusion of Free Will._

John guesses that it’s for The Woman.

Sherlock doesn’t have the courage to correct him.

 

* * *

  
  
 _6 th January 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

The date had been an unmitigated disaster and John had been lucky not to have a glass of wine tossed in his face. He hadn’t been expecting any better really, considering recent events with Jeanette, Irene Adler, and Sherlock bloody Holmes.

It was too soon. Too soon after _you’re a great boyfriend,_ after _look at us both_ , after _I don’t think so, do you?_

He still doesn’t know what she meant by that. She didn’t think what? That he should go after Sherlock after he obviously heard both of them discussing him, discussing their… their _feelings_ for him despite who they were, despite _everything._

John told her that he isn’t gay and he’s _not._ He doesn’t look at men in the street and think, wow, I want to suck his cock, that would be just great.

He doesn’t look at _Sherlock_ and think that, Christ.

But.

Oh damn it all, _but_.

He does want something from Sherlock. Something indefinable, nebulous where it swirls in his chest, fogs his brain. It numbs his fingers, sluices through his veins. Ever since Sherlock acted to protect him at the pool, ever since Moriarty put the idea in his head.

No, that’s wrong. He’s felt this since they met. It’s always been there, since he agreed to move into 221B and instead of wanting to go on a date that night, he wanted to go home to Sherlock.

_To go home to Sherlock!_ What a stupid thing to think. Baker Street wasn’t even home then, but he’d still thought of it as such at the time. He can’t ever stop his treacherous thoughts.

It isn’t fair; if Sherlock gets to have a mind palace, John should get to have a mind jail where he puts all the things he doesn’t want to think about, all the things he can’t afford to think about.

He could put it all into a cell, windowless and doorless, no bars for anything to crawl through. He could seal it all away and wash his hands of the whole business. He could go on then as he should be: assistant, flatmate, friend. Ex-army doctor, blogger, time traveller.

Not this, not confused. Not in-between, toeing the line.

He wonders if Sherlock ever crosses that line. He’s human, John knows that. Sherlock bleeds, he makes mistakes, he brushes his teeth twice a day. That doesn’t mean that he’s a sexual being though, and John’s always wondered, far more since Irene Adler got thrown into the picture.

Is Sherlock capable of that particular feeling? Besides one brief half-look in Sherlock’s bedroom and a vague outline in a sheet in Buckingham Palace, he doesn’t even know for sure that Sherlock has the necessary equipment. He must do though, it would be absurd to assume otherwise. He’s not living with a eunuch, is he?

But does he get hard? Does he masturbate? Oh God, this is why he needs the mind jail.

The image is there in startling clarity, surround sound, technicolour: Sherlock, long limbs stretched out on his bed (free from clutter, this is something of a fantasy after all, albeit an unwilling one), hand moving between his legs, head thrown back, biting his bottom lip to contain his moans of pleasure, breathing hard through his nose as he drives himself towards ecstasy.

He’s gloriously decadent, inherently sensual, of course he is. Tight, expensive clothes, silk dressing gowns, toes that curl into the sofa. Of course he is. Elegant, large hands capable of playing himself as well as he plays the violin.

The passionate little hedonist, John’s half convinced now that he must be getting himself off twice a day just because that’s the sort of self-absorbed addictive personality he is, underneath all his claims that his body is mere transport.

Has he ever fucked anyone though? Or been fucked? Irene Adler was certainly willing.

They’d make a gorgeous couple, he thinks, as similar as they were different. Dark hair, pale skin, and just brilliant, the pair of them. Wickedly so.

More images, more vibrant splashes of colour. Her soft curves against his hard planes, his pink tongue on her, her red lips around him.

Jesus, that’s-

Okay, maybe he does want to suck Sherlock off. Just a little.

And now here he is, fresh from his failed date, nearly sporting an erection in the back of a cab, and heading home to Sherlock. Fucking hell.

Sherlock will be awake, of course. Sat there at the microscope, or playing maudlin tunes on the violin, or lost in the depths of his remarkable brain. He’ll change when John comes in. He’ll look up from his experiment, set down his violin, break out of his trance. And he’ll know just by looking at the collar of John’s shirt or a crease in his trousers that his date didn’t go well.

He won’t gloat though. He won’t smirk or say anything or have any expression other than bland disinterest as he goes back to whatever he was doing.

John hates him. He really does, and he wants to ask him tonight so he knows, once and for all: are you really above it all? Don’t you feel this same scorching desire, like a spark dancing along your skin, quick and hot and leaving an unbearable, intolerable itch in its wake?

He’s going to ask tonight, he’s going to find out.

The cab pulls into Baker Street, and John gets out with a wince, sensitive and embarrassed, but thankfully not hard. He pays the bored-looking cabbie and takes a deep breath, turning to face the door.

No time like the present.

He takes the seventeen steps up to their flat two at a time, determination spurring him on.

He’s going to ask.

When he pushes open the door, he doesn’t find Sherlock upside down on the sofa, nicotine patches stuck to his arm and silently working through a mental problem.

When he walks into the sitting room, he doesn’t find Sherlock standing by the window, coaxing a tragic melody out of his violin.

When he walks into the kitchen, he doesn’t find Sherlock squinting down a lens at a sample he scraped off a shoe.

He does find him thusly: pressed up against the kitchen counter with two legs bracketing him on either side of his hips and two hands on his waist.

Two _palms_ on his waist. The fingers are concealed just below the waistband of Sherlock’s trousers, thumbs hooked over his belt.

Bloody hell.

Sherlock is kissing someone in their kitchen. Rather enthusiastically, by the sounds of it and the movements of his head.

The identity of the man he’s kissing is impossible to discern, covered bodily by Sherlock as he is. It’s definitely a man though. The span of the palms, the width of the legs, and the groan that isn’t quite low enough to be Sherlock’s are all the clues he needs to work that one out.

He’s torn, briefly. He should announce his presence, clear his throat and watch them spring apart like guilty teenagers, find out just what type of man Sherlock Holmes would choose to kiss.

He wants to watch though. He wants to stay here, silent and invisible, so he can get all the answers to the questions on the tip of his tongue as he raced up the stairs.

He wants to see Sherlock’s face as he kisses. Are his eyes closed? His cheeks flushed? Is it obvious that his tongue is in the other man’s mouth, or is he teasing him, keeping the kiss light and shallow?

He wants to see where Sherlock’s hands are. On the man’s waist in a mirror image? Clutching at his shirt, cradling his face, buried in his hair? Oh God, moving in the man’s trousers?

No, both his hands are clearly on the other man, but John can see that they’re still, no flexing of his upper arms or shoulders.

Is that what happens next then? Is this foreplay? How long does Sherlock kiss someone for before he becomes impatient or bored?

He wants to know what happens next. John may not be intimately familiar with gay sex acts, but he knows enough. So what would it be? Hand jobs? Blow jobs? Desperate rutting? Does Sherlock go for full-on penetrative sex? And if so, which position does he take, top or bottom?

The jealousy has been steadily seeping in as he thinks of each scenario. He’s starting to feel physically sick, the feeling building as his mind supplies each apparition of Sherlock doing these things with this man, this _stranger_. Why should it be him? Who is he?

Hang on: jealousy?

Oh no. No. He needs to stop this right here, he can’t- he can’t go down that road. The sickness feeling isn’t the same as the rising sensation he gets before he travels, but it’s damn close, and if he works himself up much more then there’s a high chance that he’ll end up on a jump out of the present.

“Oh my God,” he says, because it’s the only phrase he can shape his mouth around currently.

The change is instantaneous as Sherlock goes impossibly still before his eyes. There’s a soft, slick sound that can only be the separation of two mouths that were previously kissing very deeply.

He might actually _be_ sick.

“Shit,” he says, beginning to stammer. “Sorry, I had no idea you’d have someone- I had no idea there _was_ someone- I’m. I’ll just go up to my own room and leave you… No, actually, I think I’ll go out again and I’ll- I’ll leave you to it. Oh _God_. Sorry, really.”

And with that, he dashes from the room, through the door to 221B, down the stairs and out into the street where the cold wind whips at his burning, clammy face.

He doubles over, hands clasping his thighs as he gasps for air as if he’d just run a marathon.

Now he’s outside, he realises that he has no immediate plan for where to go. His left hand is tingling, but he can’t travel now, he just can’t. He’d end up coming back in an even worse position: homeless for the night _and_ naked. He clenches the hand into a fist, thinking about where he can go.

Jeanette would slam the door in his face, Harry is on the other side of the city and either lost to him at this hour in sleep or off her face, and his life is so _fucking_ wrapped up in Sherlock Holmes that he barely has any friends he could call on the off-chance that their partners might be okay with him kipping on their sofa for the night. He barely has any friends that might be okay with him kipping on their sofa in the first place, partners be damned.

Fuck. _Fuck._ He wants to scream his frustration at the sky, he wants to go back inside and scream at Sherlock for not telling him about this, for inserting himself into all of John’s cells like a virus, multiplying like bacteria and spreading like cancer and destroying him from the inside, the stupid, hopeless host.

He can’t go back inside. Sherlock is probably fucking that man by now.

John laughs then, a shrill, hysterical giggle that tickles its way up his throat and forces itself out of his mouth before he can slap a hand over it and keep it in. He must look absolutely crazy.

God help him, he is.

There’s only one person he could probably call now: Lestrade. The man was Sherlock’s self-appointed saviour, his on-again/off-again guardian angel before John took up the role of full-time protector and handler, but he likes John well enough too, and they’ve empathised with each other over many a pint.

Lestrade would take pity on him, surely. Understanding Sherlock as well as he does, he’d show mercy.

John takes his phone out of his pocket, holds down the 3 button before he can think better of it.

“Lestrade.”

“It’s John,” he says, recalls his unfortunately common name, forgets caller ID, and adds: “Watson. I need a favour.”

“What’s he done this time?”

John can’t help but smile at the fondly exasperated tone. God, just how many people love Sherlock despite themselves like this? Sherlock has no idea, he really has no clue.

The tingling in his hand is fading. _Come on,_ he thinks. He might get lucky this time, an aura without the main event.

“He’s… he’s rendered the flat uninhabitable, Greg. I could do with a place to sleep tonight, would you mind? I’ll bring beer.”

He’s got a twenty in his pocket, that’ll go a fair way if he isn’t too discerning. And after what he’s just seen, he is most definitely not.

“I got some in ready for this phone call months ago,” Lestrade’s voice is gruff, but there’s that gentle layer under the gravel surface. “See you soon.”

“Thanks, Greg.”

He disconnects the call and pockets his phone again, fingering the twenty as he does. Lestrade, as an officer of the law, can’t possibly have enough alcohol, not the copious amount that John needs to imbibe on a night like this.

There’s a Tesco Express on the way.

  
  
\----

“Out with it,” Greg says later as they sit on the floor of his living room in front of the sofa (neither of them entirely sure when they decided the floor was the better option for sitting on), well into the second case of cheap beer John had brought with him. “What did he really do that got you calling me for a place to stay at nine in the evening?”

John waves a hand, impressed with the fluid motion of it through the air. _Whoosh._

He can’t be that drunk, not with that level of grace.

“Oh you know, the usual. He’s just a prick.”

“Lovers’ spat?” Greg asks teasingly, clinking his bottle against John’s as if in a toast.

John frowns, takes a long drink out of his bottle, goes to take another sip and finds it empty. He cracks open a fresh one. “Not with _me_ ,” he replies.

“What does that mean? Is he with someone else? You’re shitting me.”

“I shit-” John holds up a finger, indicating for Greg to wait, and lets out an appallingly loud burp, “-you not.”

“Really? He’s actually with someone that’s not you. He’s with someone. No. No.” Greg draws out the second ‘no’ for a full five seconds.

“Yes!” John draws the word out in return. “I walked into the kitchen and he- he was snogging some bloke’s face off!”

“No!”

John raises his eyebrows and gestures with his bottle. A little too wildly, because beer flies out of the top, splashing over Greg’s carpet. “Right?”

“That’s insane, I mean. Sherlock? I always thought he was so, y’know. Pure.”

Greg’s face colours impressively as he says it, and John falls onto his side in helpless, breathless giggles.

“Stop it,” Greg commands in his Detective-Inspector voice. “Right now.”

John does, sitting back up and wiping tears of mirth from his eyes with a heavy hand. “Sorry, sorry.”

An uncomfortable silence descends for a moment, Greg peeling at the label on his bottle and John wondering why Greg owns two TVs that seem to occupy the same space. That’s impossible, physics says so. Oh, they’re moving too. That can’t be right.

“I always thought it’d be you,” Greg says eventually. “The way he talked about you… Only when he was high or coming down, mind. John this, John that. He babbled on and on about you and what you could do, and I never believed him, of course. And then you showed up and he was just _different_ from day one with you.”

John shifts his shoulders where he’s leaning back against the sofa. He’s never really heard how other people view his and Sherlock’s relationship, except for mockery. It’s strange.

“I always thought he must be in love with you,” Greg continues. “I guessed that the way he was acting was just how Sherlock Holmes acts when he’s in love.” He nudges John’s shoulder with his own. “I thought you must be in love with him too, you know. Aren’t you?”

Is he? John blinks slowly, thinking. How to make Greg understand? He barely understands himself.

He drops his head and looks down at his knees as he speaks. “Do you ever- do you ever look at someone and you just can’t stop thinking how amazing they are? I mean, do you ever just watch someone doing the thing they’re best at, the thing they do so effortlessly, and wonder why no one else sees it half as well as you? I watch Sherlock on every case, I listen to him in his element and I just have this one thought in my mind: He is so…”

John pauses, feeling suddenly very sober, and makes a circular movement of his hand. He must look as if he’s searching around for the word, but it’s right there, he just doesn’t want to let it out. May as well, he can blame it on being drunk later.

“He is so _special_ , I think to myself. No one else seems to see him that way though, he’s useful to you, a freak to Donovan and Anderson and to half the world no doubt. But to me? He’s just breath-taking, he’s completely turned my life around, and I can’t- I can’t imagine my life without him anymore. So yes, I’m probably in love with him.”

“Oh,” Greg says quietly.

“Oh,” John echoes, even quieter. He’s just confirmed something for himself that he’s been skirting around thinking about for _months_ now.

“And there’s the fact that he’s hideously attractive, for a weird-looking bloke,” Lestrade adds, but it’s a weak joke. “That’s probably a sign that we’ve both had too much, isn’t it?”

John can only nod his agreement, eyes closed, head beginning to pulse and ache.

“I’ll go get those blankets for the sofa,” Greg says, standing up on unsteady legs.

“Okay, sure. Thanks.”

John curls in on himself, a ball of misery on the floor, and almost falls asleep there before Greg gets back with the bedding and has to manhandle him up onto the sofa with the minimum co-operation that John gives in his sleepy, tipsy state.

“Sleep well, John,” Greg says softly when John is settled, lying down in a fairly normal position with a blanket thrown over him, and then leaves for his own room.

John sleeps like he has no cares in the world, for once.

Waking up, as always, is the hard part.


	10. Date night

_7 th January 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

There’s nothing quite like waking up with a mangled head and heart, John thinks as he opens his eyes, realises he’s not sure where he is but it is bright as _fuck_ , and closes his eyes again.

The hangover is responsible for his head being full of cotton-wool, while the heartache is caused by last night’s supremely wonderful revelation that he is, in no particular order: 1) mostly straight but somehow maybe slightly in love with (and apparently more than platonically attracted to) his male best friend; 2) somehow maybe _slightly_ in love with a man who he witnessed kissing someone _else_ just yesterday; 3) fucked; 4) completely fucked.

“Rise and shine, lover boy!”

John attempts to squint at the source of that too-loud comment. Opening his eyes again would be brutally painful and, while he’s proven to himself that he doesn’t have a lot of sense these days, he’s not a total masochist.

“Greg? Is that you?”

“You know it is. Get up. I have to go to work, and you need to go home and sort out your pathetic excuse for a love life.”

John groans, the low noise turning into a startled yell of annoyance when his covers are pulled unceremoniously off of him. _That_ gets him to open his eyes, if only so he can narrow them again to glare at Greg.

“Oi! I said get up!”

“Jesus, Greg, could you whisper?”

“NOT REALLY!” is the bellowed reply. “You’re on my sofa, John, I make the rules here.”

“Can’t you just leave me here while you go and be all… Detective Inspectorly?”

Greg snorts. “You have a job to go to as well. If I need Sherlock today, I’d prefer the version that has you around to restrain him slightly.”

Crime scenes? Today? No, thank you.

His stomach churns at the prospect of seeing both grisly body parts and seeing Sherlock. Mainly at the prospect of seeing Sherlock.

Are they going to _talk_ about what John saw yesterday evening or are they going to pretend it never happened?

What if it’s actually serious between Sherlock and… whoever that was? What if he’s round the flat all the time now?

What if Sherlock wants to bring _him_ on cases instead?

“Christ, how are you so chirpy today?” John asks, even as he now feels equally alert, dread flooding through his veins, heart fluttering and fretting in the confines of his chest.

Greg laughs at him as he putters around the living room, picking up empty cans and bottles and shoving them into a plastic bag. There are far more than John remembers drinking.

“You were ahead of me with the booze, mate, after the shock you had. I’ll tell you now, it’s not the answer.”

It occurs to John then that there doesn’t appear to be a Mrs Lestrade in the house. Otherwise, he’s pretty sure he’d have two people shrieking at him and trying to get him to leave. He recalls Sherlock making that awkward deduction on Christmas Eve about Greg’s wife sleeping with someone else and winces in sympathy.

“Yeah,” Greg says, picking up on his expression. “I’ve been there a few times. Now, if I know Sherlock and I think I do, just a bit, I’d be willing to bet that this is all a ploy to make you jealous.”

John stares at him blankly. “Sherlock wants me to be jealous,” he repeats, and Greg shakes his head in exasperation.

“Give me strength. I really don’t have time for relationship advice for the oblivious, John, so at least try and pretend you aren’t as emotionally dense as Sherlock if we’re going to do this. And get _up_ , would you?”

He leaves then, presumably to put his (rather shameful-looking) recycling out, because the door creaks open and slams shut behind him a moment later.

John scrubs a hand down over his face, feeling the rasp of his stubble against his palm. He’s due for a proper shave after yesterday. Electric razors never did cut the mustard for him, so to speak.

It looks as if he’s going to have to do something of a walk of shame – he’s still dressed in yesterday’s rumpled clothes, with not much desire to borrow something of Greg’s when he can just shower and change back at Baker Street and save having to sheepishly give back whatever Greg might be willing to lend him.

As much as he doesn’t want to see Sherlock today, he’s never been one to run from something that scared or challenged him.

He gets to his feet, pleased to find his legs are steady, even the left, which has given him no trouble at all since that second evening after Sherlock walked into his life.

Greg returns just as John finishes folding the blanket he used the night before.

“Shit,” he says the moment he walks through the door. “I’ve just thought. Did _you_ remember it was Sherlock’s birthday yesterday?”

John can only gape at him.

  
  
\----

It’s hardly a surprise that Consulting Detectives don’t spring from the earth fully formed.

John, from his visits to Sherlock as a child, knows that better than anyone. And yet he had no clue when the man’s birthday was.

He’s tense and agitated in the back of the cab on the way back to 221B, and it’s obvious enough that the cabbie asks him three times if he’s okay. Maybe the repetitive tapping _is_ a bit aggravating, John thinks, and makes an effort to stop.

The whole way there, he’s plagued with images of Sherlock and that man. Some real, like the hands dipping presumptuously below the waistband of Sherlock’s trousers. Some imagined, like Sherlock dragging the man from the kitchen to his bedroom to have his way with him.

A thought pierces his consciousness, jagged and cruel: what if the man is _still there_ this morning and hasn’t done his own walk of shame?

John all but sprints up the stairs when he arrives at Baker Street and bursts into the flat, desperate just to know now. He just wants it over with, as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

Sherlock glances up from his place at the dining table where he looks to have previously been reading an article on a website, a serene counterpoint to John’s fraught entry. There’s a steaming mug in front of him, and another sits opposite him.

John’s gut seems to plummet from his abdomen, right down through his body, through the floor, and into the café. Sherlock has company.

“It’s yours,” Sherlock says, waving an expansive hand at the tea and looking back at his laptop. “I thought you’d arrive around this time, knowing when Lestrade has to get to that thing that could loosely be called his ‘job’.”

“How did you know I was at Lestrade’s?”

“Please,” Sherlock huffs.

John trudges almost mechanically across the room to take the seat opposite Sherlock’s, turning his head to look around the flat for signs of another’s presence as he goes. When he sits, he looks down the corridor and sees Sherlock’s bedroom door is shut.

“Sherlock, I-”

Intense, quicksilver eyes flick up to his. Sherlock’s face is open – he’s curious, John realises, as to what he’s about to say.

“Yes?” Sherlock prompts when John fails to deliver in a timely fashion.

John blinks a few times, casting his eyes down and away from that resolute gaze that sees him all too well.

“I didn’t realise it was your birthday yesterday,” he finishes, hoping it doesn’t sound as hollow and lame as it does to his own ears.

“Oh,” Sherlock says, and it’s clear that he was expecting something else. There’s a clicking of keys for a moment as Sherlock types something, likely thinking of what to say next now John’s thrown him a for a loop by not conforming to the script. “No matter. Why should you have known if I never told you?”

“We’re friends; I should have asked. I bet you know when my birthday is.”

“The thirty-first of March.”

John smiles at the immediacy of the answer, the confidence in Sherlock’s tone. He thinks of Sherlock’s journal, all the records of him littered throughout its pages. Height, weight, shoe size, chest and leg measurements, the diameter of the scar on his left shoulder…

“You know a lot about me,” John says ruefully. “Still far more than I know about you, even now.”

Sherlock’s shoulders lift and drop in a brief shrug. “But you could argue that I’ve still known you for far longer. You’ve seen the journal. Besides, I have a better memory than you. I don’t even need that book now, I keep all my data about you in my mind palace. It’s not a method that’s exactly available to a mind like yours though.”

There was a subtle insult in there, but John focuses on another bit of Sherlock’s speech entirely. “I’m in your mind palace?”

A wrinkle appears in Sherlock’s brow, another just below the bridge of his nose. “Of course you are.”

The self-assurance in Sherlock’s words is gone, replaced by a soft sort of hesitance he’s not heard from Sherlock before. John doesn’t push by asking why Sherlock wouldn’t delete the extraneous data as he so often says he has to.

Sherlock answers his question anyway. “Never know when it might be relevant,” he mumbles.

John beams at him, humbled to know that Sherlock considers him that important. “Never do,” he agrees.

After a short companionable silence, John realises he needs to address the elephant in the room. If he gets that over with, he can move forward in his relationship with Sherlock, whatever direction it may take. They can have this: this easy, comfortable friendship of mutual admiration and regard. They can have this, and John would never jeopardise it by asking for more. He still doesn’t have any idea what _more_ would really entail, or how much of that he actually wants, but he needs to know about the mystery man. He needs to lay a few fears to rest.

“Last night,” he begins, and Sherlock’s eyes falls away from his.

“A minor transgression, John,” Sherlock tells the table, index finger tracing idle patterns onto the wood. “A lapse, if you will, and one I’d hoped you wouldn’t discover.”

Sherlock sounds so _guilty_ , and John’s breath catches in his throat. Guilt twists in his own chest, ugly and sneering. “Sherlock, no. It doesn’t matter to me what you- or _who_ you-”

“I know.” Sherlock fortunately holds up a hand to stop him blathering. “Thank you, but it won’t happen again.”

The binds around his heart loosen. “Oh, well. That’s good. I mean, it’s not _good_ , I-”

John breaks off with a frustrated sigh and Sherlock laughs. He’s obviously not that torn up over whoever it was, so it can’t have been serious.

In his relief, John considers Sherlock’s laugh. It’s a rich, vibrant sound that always seems to warm him from head to toe. He associates that sound with fireplaces now, a welcoming chair that faces a non-identical but no less complementary twin. He’s been so oblivious, he realises with a pang. How could he have been blind for so long to the way Sherlock makes him _feel_.

When he arrived back from Afghanistan, his days were cold and lifeless. He woke up alone in his tiny Spartan bedsit (one bedroom, one chair) and he went through the motions that sustained his body – breathing, eating, sleeping. Even as he went out with rugby mates and lied in therapy and arranged a date with a woman he’d never met, he felt _nothing_. He laughed and he drank and he pretended, and each night he came back to the bedsit and he looked at the gun in his desk drawer before he went to sleep alone.

Then he met Sherlock. Now he’s a part of the most significant friendship he’s ever had in his life. Now he tears down the streets of London on the heels of a mad, brilliant genius, that same gun that he contemplated every night tucked into his jeans, warmed by the skin of his back. He sleeps in a bedroom that contains mementos of his new life: newspaper clippings from cases, tokens from clients. Sherlock sleeps in the room beneath his, and John shares his home and his life with someone again. He helps Sherlock with his cases, he keeps Sherlock grounded in the present and he teaches him in the past and his life _means_ something again.

He gets the adrenaline and the danger that he needs to keep him from being bored and it’s no wonder, is it, that he should fall in love with the man that has given him all of this when he thought his life was over.

God, does he ever hope Lestrade is right about Sherlock. They could have it all, if he’s right.

“We should go shopping,” John blurts out.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him. “Shopping.”

“For food,” John explains. “I think we should celebrate your birthday tonight. I’ll cook, we’ll get a bottle of wine. I’ll make you watch those Bond films I was telling you about the other night, remember? Double-oh-seven?”

There’s a doubtful edge to Sherlock’s smile. “John, I don’t-”

“Oh, come on. Not every evening can be gory murders or clever robberies. Tell you what, if Lestrade comes up with something for us, we’ll do that instead. If not, we have a semi-normal evening together like semi-normal best friends.”

Sherlock’s smile drops and John’s heart does the same. What has he said wrong?

“Sherlock?”

No answer. Sherlock just stares ahead, vacant and stony. It’s sort of terrifying how much it makes John think of a computer crashing and not responding.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock blinks slowly at that, then shakes his head quickly. “I’m… I’m your best friend?”

Of all the things.

The disbelieving tone makes John want to reach out and embrace Sherlock. He sounds so astonished, and he looks so much like that little boy John has left behind in a meadow too many times now.

It seems he hasn’t lost that shy sweetness his seven year old self possessed after all.

“Yeah, of course you are,” John says. “Of course you’re my best friend.”

Sherlock’s lips twitch – he’s holding back one of his full-on, completely sincere smiles. They’re the only ones he bothers to hide.

He stands up, turns away from John, and goes over to the front door to shrug his coat on.

“Come on, John.”

“Where are we going?”

Sherlock swivels back around to look at him. The smile has broken through and it’s a sight to behold. There’s no hint of menace, no obfuscation. He’s just… happy.

 “Shopping, of course.”

John laughs, ridiculously pleased with this outcome. It’s the lightest he’s felt since he was snatched off the street by Moriarty’s men last May. “Let me get a shower and change first. Or this will be the third day wearing this shirt.”

He gets up and heads for the bathroom, leaving Sherlock in the sitting room practically bouncing with impatience at being made to wait. Too much energy, as always, even when all they’re going to do is go to a supermarket. That reminds him, he needs to keep Sherlock away from the trolleys this time. And small children. And their mothers. And good-looking men, just in case.

“Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s?” Sherlock calls out to him just as he turns the water on to shower.

The questions startles him, but not as much as the sudden blast of cold water that assaults his back. He shudders away from the deluge and sharply turns the dial anticlockwise, back into the hot section. He knows _he_ didn’t leave it that way but he tries to ignore that fact, because his brain will short circuit and _die_ if he allows himself to wonder why Sherlock took a cold shower in the time he was gone.

“Either,” he calls back. “As long as I don’t have to use a bloody chip and pin machine!”

  
  
\----

“Sherlock, would you mind carrying the-”

He’s gone. From the cab and into number 221. Of course, John should have known better. Having a normal-ish evening together will never include Sherlock coughing up the cab fare or helping to carry the shopping into the flat.

John shakes his head and heaves himself and the bags out of the car, but he’s still smiling fondly enough that it makes his cheeks hurt. This newly realised attraction is making him revert back to his teenage years, which manages to be both exhilarating and mortifying.

He troops up the stairs, wondering if Sherlock is even aware of how much the night they have planned is like a date-night. John meanwhile is acutely aware.

The bottle of wine weighs heavily, in more ways than one. Sherlock picked it, with John’s encouragement that he get something he liked seeing as it was technically for his birthday. That was all fine and well, until Sherlock chose a red wine, something expensive and impossible for John to pronounce, no matter how many times he got Sherlock to repeat the name.

(Maybe he did that the last two times just to hear Sherlock’s deep voice caress the soft French syllables again. Maybe he then wandered around the aisles of the supermarket in something of a daze, imagining them sharing the bottle of wine, imagining a tipsy Sherlock with his lips stained crimson...)

There’s a sexual identity crisis just waiting to happen, and he knows it. Except- maybe there isn’t, this time, because now he’s seen Sherlock with someone else, he’s realised just how badly he wants it to be _him_ that gets to have that side of Sherlock.

It doesn’t matter that Sherlock is a man. John was a doctor and a soldier – he’s seen enough naked male bodies to know they don’t repulse him. He thought they didn’t turn him on either, but Sherlock is just the exception to every rule that John never particularly cared for in the first place.

Until they get into that situation, he can’t know for sure, but he’d be willing to bet that after a few mishaps, he’d be as comfortable with Sherlock’s (undeniably striking) form as he was with any woman he’s ever been with.

The physicality isn’t everything anyway. All his relationships since meeting Sherlock have failed, every one of them, no matter how good the sex was, because each woman has realised she will never be at the top of John’s list of priorities. Even when he hadn’t consciously admitted how much he actually _wants_ Sherlock, his life still revolved around him.

Now he knows Sherlock feels desire too. Maybe that’s the reason he’s accepted just how hard he’s fallen. It’s safe to be attracted to Sherlock now he knows there’s a real chance of reciprocation, whereas before it was safer to avoid it, to sweep it all under the rug of ‘I’m not gay’.

He’s still not gay. If they watch the films tonight, he’ll still be more attracted to the Bond girls than to Bond. If he looks away from the screen though, he’ll have to admit that he’s even more attracted to Sherlock because of the history, the present, and the future they share.

That’s far more important to him than what’s underneath Sherlock’s pristine suits. Having said that, he’s getting hot under the collar now just thinking about Sherlock in that way, the way he never allowed himself to think before he saw Sherlock kissing someone. It felt almost sacrilegious then, reducing such an intelligent machine to such basic, human urges. It still feels a bit like blasphemy to even picture Sherlock, naked and panting and _writhing_ beneath his touch, but that edge only makes it more exciting, more appealing.

When he gets into the flat, he deposits the bags in the kitchen. He takes the bottle of wine out, turning it in his hands as he considers it. They could start on it now. They could get another bottle. They could waste the whole day _and_ the whole evening together, drinking and talking and maybe for once they’ll talk about this _thing_ that’s been steadily building between them instead of ignoring it and acting like they don’t both flinch away immediately if their fingers brush.

He wanders back out of the kitchen to search for Sherlock, looking down the passage that leads from the sitting room to Sherlock’s room. He spots him, standing in the doorway and looking down at his bed with a frown. John dismisses the expression almost straight away, more concerned with other things.

“Sherlock,” he calls out, wanting to get his attention and ask what he’d like to do now.

“We have a client,” is Sherlock’s reply.

“What,” John says, almost laughing in disbelief as he walks down the corridor, bottle still in hand, “in your bedroom?”

As he reaches Sherlock’s side, he automatically looks down in the same direction as him.

That’s when he sees Irene Adler sleeping in Sherlock’s bed.

“Oh,” he says.

He knows Sherlock hears the disappointment in that one syllable. It’s so tangible, so palpable that it’s a wonder that the word doesn’t sprout legs and run away from the situation the way John wants to as he grasps how stupid he’s been. This is _Sherlock_ , for God’s sake.

‘Dead’ women turn up in his bed. He solves murders to keep himself from being bored.

He’d probably be bored of John within a week if they made a go of this. The man he was kissing so passionately last night has already been cast aside, or so it would seem.

They would burn bright like magnesium, him and Sherlock. They would flare for a glorious instant, and then all that would be left of what they have now would be a charred remnant.

The wine bottle drops to his side, all plans for the evening already forgotten.


	11. The proof

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I should probably begin warning for gratuitous use of Series 3 references now. Nothing to spoil the plot or anything like that, nothing you'd pick up on as an obvious S3 reference unless you'd already seen it. Just letting you know!

_7 th January 2011 (Sherlock is 30)_

Sherlock idly plucks the strings of his violin, playing a pizzicato version of his composition for John as he thinks.

_Bond Air is go, that’s decided. Check with the Coventry lot._

He’d made the connection with Flight 007 this afternoon, thanks to his recollection of John’s suggestion – the movie night that never was. He was actually almost disappointed to find Irene in his bed. Imagine that, Sherlock Holmes fancying a tedious evening of films with obvious plots over the real puzzle, the mysterious Woman with her impenetrable phone.

It wasn’t the tedium he was missing though. Something would have happened between him and John had it all gone to plan, he’s sure of it. John’s behaviour this morning after seeing that kiss tipped him off, his exclamation of his much-hated middle name – in front of the Woman, a perfect stranger, when even _Sherlock_ had to procure John’s birth certificate to find it out – just cemented it.

Conclusion: John is already jealous. Sherlock had thought it would take much longer for him to start displaying any recognisable traits but, as ever, John Watson has proved him wrong.

“Coventry.”

“I’ve never been,” comes the mild voice of Irene Adler. “Is it nice?”

Sherlock frowns, looking around in his immediate vicinity. “Where’s John?”

“He went out a couple of hours ago.”

Ah. Yes, the cover story. He recalls John’s agitation, his hand around Sherlock’s forearm, his panicked glance in the direction of Irene in the sitting area.

As it turns out, John is already _seething_ with jealousy, judging by his stress-related absence now.

He really hopes John doesn’t pop up naked in this room when he comes back, it would negate his self-control from before when he at least managed to leave out of Irene’s sight. As well as that, while _she_ might be happy parading around nude, Sherlock (possessive as he is) would rather she didn’t get a show in return from John.

And then there’s the danger of someone untrustworthy finding out about John’s ability, especially someone as mercenary and keen to sell secrets as this woman.

“I was just talking to him,” Sherlock says, to maintain the cover.

“He said you do that.”

Irene smiles as she speaks. She probably thinks it’s enigmatic, that she’s wearing another of her disguises, but Sherlock is no fool. And he’s no stranger to affection that isn’t returned. He just needs the opportunity to check his hypothesis.

“What’s Coventry got to do with anything?” she asks.

There’s his chance. She’s attracted to intelligence and she’s attracted to _him_ when he speaks. Might be the voice, at least a little bit. John said he liked his voice... No, can’t think about that, he doesn’t want his _own_ pulse racing after all.

“It’s a story. Probably not true. In the Second World War, the Allies knew Coventry was going to be bombed. They’d broken a German code but they didn’t want the Germans to _know_ they’d broken the code, so they let it happen anyway.”

“Have you ever had anyone?” she asks suddenly.

It catches him off-guard. He was expecting to at least have to talk through a deduction before he got this response from her. “Sorry?”

“And when I say ‘ _had’_ , I’m being indelicate.”

“I don’t understand.” Of course he does, but she enjoys his supposed naïveté.

“I’ll be delicate then.”

She rises from the chair, a soft rustle of his dark silk dressing gown that she’s purloined. Her long hair is still wet from the bath she insisted on taking. Sherlock studies her as she approaches him, suspicious of what she has planned, eager to get the result of his experiment.

She’s an attractive woman, he can tell that much. John has always been a man for admiring beauty, and it’s something he tried to instil in Sherlock during his formative years as they sat together in the meadow, appreciating the scents of the various flowers, respecting the staunch old trees that weathered every storm. Without him, Sherlock doubts he’d have much awareness of beauty at all.

As it is, he knows that beauty is a construct based entirely on childhood impressions, influences, and role models.

And John is easily the most beautiful person he’s met.

Irene Adler, with her blood red lips, her painted eyes, and her cloying perfume… well, she could never hope to measure up.

She kneels in front of him and puts her hand atop his. It’s slightly cold, despite the warmth of the fire next to them. He keeps his legs crossed, the better to preserve a small distance between them.

“Let’s have dinner,” she says, the same line she’s used in nearly all of her texts. He does so hate repetition.

“Why?”

“You might be hungry.”

Sherlock conceals a sneer, turning her hand gently in his so she doesn’t suspect.

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

He leans towards her, sensitive fingertips seeking out his prize. His proof.

“Why,” he husks out, voice pitched deliberately low, “would I want to have _dinner_ if I wasn’t hungry?”

She mirrors him, leaning forward uncomfortably close into his space. He parts his lips, knowing she’s looking at them. Her pulse jumps beneath his stroking fingers. He really ought to repeat this experiment with his other subject, he thinks.

“Oh, Mr Holmes,” she murmurs. “If it was the end of the world, if this was the very last night… would you have dinner with me?”

Not a chance. If it was the end of the world, the only dining partner he’d choose would be John.

“Sherlock!”

His eyes wander towards the noise and he feels a flicker of regret at it not being John’s voice calling his name.

“Too late,” Irene says, beginning to turn and pull away from him.

_By about 16 years._

If only she knew. Now he’s certain of the password for her phone though, so perhaps it’s best she doesn’t know.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he says lightly. “It’s Mrs Hudson.”

She extricates her hand, still unusually cool. His own feels warmer at the loss of her touch.

 

* * *

  
  
_27 th May 1995 (John is 33, Sherlock is 14)_

Sherlock is already in the meadow when he gets there. He’s the oldest John has seen him, except for his age in the present, of course. He’s a teenager by the look of him. A young man in a smart Eton school uniform (which means he's bunking off to be here now). Or, it would be smart if one of the knees of his trousers wasn’t ripped. It would be if his shirt was tucked in and his tie was done up properly.

His nose is buried in a book – advanced biology – but he looks up at John’s arrival, the soft thump of his weight in the grass.

John gets to his feet, a trifle awkwardly without a stitch on. The awkwardness is heightened by Sherlock’s age and the way his eyes flit over all of John’s naked body, from head to toe, and then quickly flick off to the side. A faint pink hue creeps over his ears, temples and cheekbones. John gapes, unsure if he’s really seeing a blush on the face of Sherlock Holmes.

“Hello, John.”

There’s a crack in his voice and Sherlock shuts his eyes the moment he’s got the words out, clearly embarrassed and furious with himself for it. John might have found it all funny a few months ago, but now his chest just aches in sympathy. Puberty is tough.

It looks particularly tough for Sherlock, whose skinny limbs are gawky and coltish. His curls look shiny with grease in the fading afternoon sun, his pale skin littered with angry red marks. He’s not only plagued with acne, some of it looks to be caused by a shaving rash too.

For John, it’s just another glimpse into Sherlock’s life before he met him for the first time. He’s known Sherlock as an aloof adult, a wilful child, and now as a self-conscious teenager. He feels lucky to get that, to be able to experience first-hand all the stages that have made Sherlock who he is currently. He just hopes Sherlock gets something out of his presence as well.

“Hi. Any clothes for me?”

Sherlock glances at him again, sideways, out of the corner of his eye, and then looks down at his book intently. He turns a page, dipping his head to scrutinise a diagram. He’s probably correcting the labels on it or something.

His blush becomes more fierce and he turns another page, then several more as if to put distance between himself and whatever he was last looking at. “Um,” he says, and it’s the least eloquent thing to ever leave Sherlock’s mouth. “Over by the tree,” he says in a rush, making it sound like it was all one word.

John goes to dress, bemused and pondering Sherlock’s odd reaction to him. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Sherlock was _flustered_. There’s absolutely no reason for him to be flustered though. He knows from Sherlock’s journal that he’s showed up here in Hindhead around thirty times at this point in Sherlock’s life, if he’s thirteen like John thinks he is.

“How old are you?” he calls out across the meadow. He tucks his borrowed shirt into his borrowed trousers, grateful that Sherlock has remembered a belt with more holes for him this time.

“Fourteen.”

He always gets it wrong.

Feeling much more teenager-appropriate, he turns to walk back over to Sherlock and finds he’s put the book down. His back is a miserable curve as he hunches over, arms hugging his knees and feet shifting restlessly against a patch of flattened grass.

John sits beside him and lays a hand on his bony shoulder, which Sherlock shakes off with a glare. “What’s the matter?”

“Do you-” Sherlock cuts himself off, shaking his head. “I don’t think you’re old enough, actually, so there’s no point asking you.”

“Okay?” John’s starting to get concerned. That’s a general state when it comes to Sherlock, naturally. God only knows how he’s getting on with Irene Adler in the present.

He thinks of their battle of wits in the flat earlier, how it seemed like flirting, _foreplay_ even. He really has no chance, if that’s what interests Sherlock. That may have been why he had that little outburst about baby names, but Sherlock probably didn’t even notice his green eyes. Sherlock wouldn’t even understand the reference, he’d just state that John’s eyes are blue.

The teenage Sherlock at his side takes a deep breath, then lets out a short sigh. “Do you remember that book  we talked about when I was eleven?”

Eleven. To his knowledge, he’s not yet visited Sherlock at eleven. He saw him at nine a few months back, when Sherlock was telling him at length all about bee orchids, or _Ophrys apifera_ , and giving him an assortment of random facts about _actual_ bees.

“Not happened for me yet,” he says.

Sherlock gives him a twist of his lips, a sort of rueful smile. “I knew it.” The expression drops into a frown. “I don’t know why I asked.”

John just shrugs and stays silent, giving Sherlock a moment to think. It’s obvious that something is bothering him, so he’ll need time to work through it.

The pause extends, and John closes his eyes. He figures it’s late spring, so there won’t be many birds about now as they hide away in their nests, incubating and awaiting new life. Sure enough, there’s no birdsong in the meadow as he listens to the breeze ruffling the grass and flowers around him. There’s a bee close by, drifting further away from them between the petals of neighbouring blooms judging by the changing pitch of the buzz he can hear. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know Sherlock is probably tracking the bee’s movements, observing its behaviour.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

John’s eyes snap open, surprised by the question itself and the abruptness of it after the period of stillness.

Sherlock’s gaze is earnest and there’s veiled wariness in there too, as if he actually _cares_ about the answer to this question.

Too much truth about the future is something he’s always avoided giving Sherlock, trying not to give him ‘spoilers’, as it were. There doesn’t seem to be any harm in answering him this time though, when it doesn’t concern him specifically.

“No, Sherlock, I don’t.”

Sherlock just nods and then seems to consider that for a moment.

In turn, John considers Sherlock’s flush when he arrived. The perils and changes of puberty.

“Do you?”

“Have a _girlfriend_?” Sherlock snorts. “Don’t be absurd, John. Girls are more annoying now than they’ve ever been.”

“A boyfriend, then, perhaps?”

Bright eyes meet his for an instant before darting away again.

“Which is fine,” John prompts when Sherlock makes no reply.

“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock snaps, so similar to his present self. “No, John, I don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend. Everyone I know is obsessed with all of… all of _that_. I can’t believe you are too.”

John smiles at Sherlock’s stern face. “Sherlock,” he says softly, “you asked me first.”

A beat of silence passes, then:

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have a boyfriend?”

John shakes his head. “No.”

“Good,” Sherlock huffs. He then looks horrified, mouth open and eyes wide. “I don’t mean _good_ , I just mean that it’s good that-”

“That I’m not obsessed with all of _that_?”

“Yes!” Sherlock waves a hand and stands up. “That!”

The laughter that follows is absolutely shameless, and probably a bit manic. John doesn’t mean to laugh, but he can’t stop his delighted giggling, not even when Sherlock petulantly orders him to stop and gives him a vicious kick in the shin.

He’s finally put it together, after all this time, after all the clues.

 _Good_ , he said, just like John did this morning when Sherlock said he wouldn’t be seeing that man again.

 _Good_ , he said because, just like John, he was jealous.

Teenage Sherlock had a crush on him.

He can only hope now that some of it has carried over to adulthood.

 

* * *

  
  
_7 th January 2011 (Sherlock is 30)_

He was right about the password.

“There you are, brother,” he says, holding the phone out to Mycroft. “I hope the contents make up for any inconvenience I may have caused you tonight.”

He was right about the password, and Mycroft was right about _him_. In the plane, he accused Sherlock of showing off for John with his deductions. He was, of course, when is he ever not?

_And I helped drive him into your path. I’m sorry._

“I’m certain they will,” Mycroft replies, the lightness of his tone conveying a forgiveness of sorts, not that Sherlock needs it from him.

He turns to leave, keen to get back to Baker Street, to see if John is back. John _is_ in his path now, that can’t be helped. Mycroft has made his feelings on the matter clear, but Sherlock has never cared less for Mycroft’s feelings.

“If you’re feeling kind, lock her up. Otherwise-” Sherlock stops. Thinks. Maybe there’s a way to win Mycroft over and stop him interfering and plotting to remove John. He looks at Irene, the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes. Sentiment really is a chemical defect, but it’s one he knows something about.

“On second thoughts, just put her in witness protection. She may prove valuable at some point.”

The tears spill over. Sherlock catalogues her, detached and unmoved. Her flawless make-up is now ruined by tear-tracks, her perfect hair come loose. Her perfect mask is in tatters. A brilliant mind brought to this because the heart dared to disagree.

It can’t happen to him, he decides. He takes one last look at the Woman and then addresses his brother, wordlessly asking to speak with him in private with an inclination of his head.

Mycroft rolls his eyes, ever the more theatrical one, and makes a call for someone to come get Irene Adler. It takes less than thirty seconds for them to arrive.

“What is it?” Mycroft asks when they stroll outside of his stupidly large house. “You’re not going to apologise, are you? I don’t think my heart could take it.”

“I want you to do me a favour.”

“I think you owe _me_ a favour or two after tonight, dear brother.”

Sherlock glares at him. “It’s about John.”

 

* * *

  
  
_18 th March 2011 (John is 33)_

Mycroft slides a plastic wallet across the table at him in the café.

“Is this the file on Irene Adler?” John asks, looking down at its contents. That damn camera phone is in there.

The Woman. Since filling him in on the events of that evening in January – the plane, the phone – Sherlock has barely mentioned her. They’ve skirted around the subject, Sherlock for reasons of his own, and John because he’d rather not think about her and whatever she might have meant to Sherlock.

“Closed forever,” Mycroft says with a gesture at the file. “I am about to go and inform my brother – or, if you’d prefer, _you_ are – that she’s got herself into a witness protection scheme in America. New name, new identity. She will survive, and thrive even, but he can never see her again.”

“Why would he care?” John asks. “He despised her at the end. Won’t even refer to her by name, just ‘the Woman’.”

“Is that loathing? Or a salute? One of a kind, the one woman who matters?”

“He’s not like that,” John insists, speaking from experience even as he’s no longer sure of what he’s saying. “He doesn’t feel things that way, I don’t think.”

Mycroft leans back in his chair, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?”

John doesn’t do well with deductions about something so volatile, so incomprehensible.

It’s been a strange, arduous two months since John’s realisation of his feelings for Sherlock, since he was given a shred of hope that they were once and might _still_ be returned. In that time, Sherlock has been praising him for his intellect far more often and seems to be making excuses to touch him (lots of hands on shoulders, brushing fingers, and requests to fetch things from Sherlock’s pockets lately) or just outright jumping him. He’ll never forget the incident where Sherlock crowded him up against the sink as he was washing up one night, suddenly wrapping a hand around his left wrist and pressing down over his pulse.

“Ninety-six beats per minute,” Sherlock had pronounced a moment later while John tried to remember the mechanics of how to inhale and exhale with Sherlock pressed this close, looking and smelling damn near _edible._

“Yeah,” he replied, pleased when there was no obvious shake in his voice, “because you startled me, you lunatic. What are you doing?”

“Just an experiment.”

There have been a lot of those too, these last two months. He always has an excuse.

John meanwhile has been trying to let things progress naturally. He’s got his hunch about Sherlock having little to no experience, comments about sex not being alarming aside, and he’d really rather it be Sherlock who initiates anything between them. That’s not an entirely selfless wish on his part to let Sherlock take things at his pace and be in control, John’s also pretty terrified that if he gets any part of this wrong then he’s going to be back to where he was before Sherlock.

He’s not going back there. He can’t, he won’t survive it.

What can they deduce about Sherlock’s heart?

“I don’t know,” John answers truthfully.

“Neither do I.” Mycroft smiles and seems to remember something. “But initially, he wanted to be a pirate.”

“I know. I was there.”

He got a bruise from the plastic cutlass.

Mycroft’s smile fades. “Of course. You probably even met Redbeard.”

“Is that Sherlock’s pirate alter ego?” John asks with a disbelieving laugh.

The smile is swapped for a superior smirk. “Oh no. Just something you apparently _don’t_ know about.”

John tries and fails not to appear confused by that comment.

“He’ll be okay with this,” he says to get them back on track after that uncomfortable interlude. “Witness protection, never seeing her again.”

“I agree. That’s why I decided to tell him that.”

The words and Mycroft’s small intake a breath make John’s stomach take a swan dive. “Instead of what?”

“She’s dead.” He says it so dispassionately that John almost shivers. “She was captured by a terrorist cell in Karachi two months ago and beheaded.”

John takes a moment to process that. To think about relaying that information to Sherlock after two months without plaintive violin music or brooding silences.

“It’s definitely her? She’s done this before.”

Mycroft merely favours him with a deeply unimpressed look. “I was _thorough_ this time. It would take Sherlock Holmes to fool me, and I don’t think he was on hand, do you?”

John _knows_ he wasn’t. Sherlock hasn’t travelled out of the country, unless he did it within the few hours when John was gone on one of his jumps.

It’s incredibly unlikely, maybe even impossible that he could have done so. It’s even more unlikely that he _would_ have, even for Irene Adler.

“So,” Mycroft says and pushes the file further across the table towards John. He presses his clasped hands under his chin, eyebrows drawn downwards, the very picture of brotherly concern. “What do we tell Sherlock?”

 

* * *

  
  
_18 th March 2011 (Sherlock is 30)_

The Woman is probably enjoying America, Sherlock thinks to himself as he watches the paths raindrops trace on the window of 221B. They’re much less intelligent there and subsequently more easy to manipulate.

Sherlock takes his phone from his pocket and sends a message to Mycroft.

_He told me she was in witness protection AND gave me the phone when I asked. John’s loyalty proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Don’t bother us again or there will be consequences. SH_

He presses the ‘send’ button with an air of finality and takes out the other phone.

John pressing this into his waiting palm didn’t just demonstrate loyalty. He twirls the item in his fingers, smiling.

Twelve days until John’s birthday. It’s time to step up the game.

The text reply comes within the next minute.

_Don’t forget what happened with Redbeard, brother mine._


	12. Lovestoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, I hope you enjoy this one.
> 
> Warning for recreational drug use.
> 
> ETA: SPOILERS FOR SERIES 3! I almost forgot!

_27 th March 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

“An essay,” John says. “You’re giving me an essay for my birthday.”

Sherlock has just handed him a thick sheaf of papers, spiral bound, bearing the title ‘Suppressed Hatred in Close Proximity’.

“Yes.”

“An essay about how all my friends hate me.”

Sherlock winces at that, nose wrinkling in displeasure. “Not _all_ of your friends. You’re missing the point of the work, John.”

The point of the work. John has already ascertained that, despite what Sherlock might think. Sherlock had thoughtfully presented him with his early birthday gift right after John asked for the second time that day if Sherlock wouldn’t reconsider joining them all at the birthday dinner next week.

Truth be told, John _knows_ he doesn’t have close relationships with any of his other friends. Not since Sherlock. He barely even stays in touch with his friends from the army, the only ones he could really stand to think of or be around after he first came home.

None of his friends, army or otherwise, _hate_ -hate him exactly, but they aren’t the mates he once thought of them as. He’s not the person they once thought of him as, either.

He doesn’t really _want_ to go and spend time with them on his birthday, but he also didn’t want to let it go by as just another evening the way Sherlock would have it, scrutinising crime scene photos or standing about in a morgue while Sherlock makes deductions over fingernails. He had to make some attempt to keep a life outside of him, didn’t he?

But now Sherlock has gone to this frankly bizarre effort to stop John going out with anyone else on his birthday. John gets the point of that, all right.

The worst part is how _endearing_ he finds it.

“I’m not missing anything,” he says. “Sherlock, if you wanted to have my birthday be just the two of us, you only had to say.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen minutely before he turns away to hide his reaction, and John all but puffs up at his ability to surprise him.

“I had plans,” Sherlock says, the week of sulking after John’s first invite explained, his tone still sullen even now. “Something better than a boring _dinner_ with _people_.”

John laughs, amazed and a little humbled to know that Sherlock had actually bothered to devise some sort of nefarious plot to celebrate something as pedestrian as his birth. “So I’ll cancel dinner. If this is anything to go by,” John holds up the essay, tapping the cover, “then no one will really mind.”

“They really won’t.”

A spark of hope ignites in John’s chest at Sherlock’s smile, blinding in its sincerity. It’s like a call-back to that conversation about him being John’s best friend.

This could finally be the payoff from that time, from the plans _he_ had the day after Sherlock’s birthday.

“So what is it that you have in mind?” he asks, biting his lower lip to stifle a smile in return.

Quick, clever eyes track the movement, watching his mouth before sliding away, and the spark becomes a small flame. Dinner is very much cancelled.

“I need to go to Bart’s,” Sherlock announces out of nowhere, and he leaves the room and then the flat without another word or even a glance in John’s direction.

“God help me,” John says to the ceiling when the front door slams.

He shakes his head and goes to sit down. As he skims through the pages of the essay, he hums ‘Happy Birthday’ to himself.

It turns out to be exceedingly well written and thought out. There are references and quotes and everything.

He expected no less.

  


* * *

  
  
_31 st March 2011 (John is 34, Sherlock is 30)_

He’s drinking from a bloody measuring cylinder.

He didn’t even ask Sherlock whether it was _clean_ first, trusting that Sherlock at least liked him enough to want to keep him alive and well.

“You’ll thank me,” Sherlock had said when John looked at the choice of glassware with a sigh at Sherlock’s controlling ways.

At present, John is just mildly perturbed by the fact that Sherlock’s comment would suggest that he has something _else_ planned for later.

(Also mildly excited.)

“I didn’t think you would ever be doing something as disturbingly normal as a pub crawl with me,” he says later on when he’s around halfway through his third four-hundred and forty-three point seven millilitres of beer in the third bar of the night.

Then again, normal and Sherlock just don’t go together. He’s guessed the morbid idea behind this outing now, as Sherlock told him he would at the start of the evening. He should have known before they even left the flat that it would be murder-themed.

John gestures at their graduated cylinders and then at Sherlock’s phone. “What’s _this_ even about?”

Sherlock swipes a finger across the screen of his phone with a pleased flourish, and then looks up at John. “Hmm? Oh, that. Molly Hooper and I calculated the best way to allow us to drink a large quantity of alcohol without getting ill.”

John can only blink at him.

“I didn’t want the mood of the evening to sour,” Sherlock continues. “I wanted to keep us in the sweet spot…” He trails off, glowering down at his phone.

When he looks closely, John can’t tell whether it’s the unintentional innuendo, the alcohol, or the lighting in the bar making Sherlock’s face look that flushed. Maybe a combination.

It’s a ridiculous amount of thought and care put into what should be a simple and care-free evening.

“Sherlock,” he says gently, “we’re just having an evening out together for my birthday, to celebrate the fact that I’m one year closer to being the wrong side of thirty-five. It doesn’t have to be planned to the second like a military operation.”

“And if you’re sick later? Will you look back on this night with fondness then?”

“Of course I will, because I spent it getting drunk with _you_.”

The screen of the phone goes black. Sherlock puts the mobile away, one hand delving into the inner folds his jacket. “What do you want to do now then?” He sounds lost.

John grins wickedly.

  
  
\----

The shots were a bad idea.

Outside the sixth bar of the evening, in the area where the smokers congregate, John is sitting at a table with his head in his hands to block out the painful light and to stop things around him spinning. The twin smells of cigarette smoke and sweeter smoke from _another_ source are particularly pungent, making his stomach turn.

Meanwhile, Sherlock is off his face and arguing at an inappropriate volume with another patron about how he knows the man is smoking Cannabis, as if the characteristic scent wasn’t a dead giveaway.

“I know ash!” he shouts, lurching into the other man’s space to poke him in the chest as punctuation for each word of his next remark: “Don’t. Tell. Me. I. Don’t!”

On that last word, he actually _shoves_ the man’s shoulder and fucking hell, his best friend is absolutely smashed and about to be punched in the face. He’s about to be more smashed. Literally.

With some semblance of his usual sober grace and no small amount of luck, Sherlock manages to rear back out of the way of the man’s fist though, narrowly missing what would surely have been an epic black eye.

That’s when John jumps to his feet to break up the fight, arms looping around Sherlock’s middle as he continues to thrash _his_ arms out, either trying to do a z-snap or trying to hit the bloke who’s being held back by his own friends. With Sherlock in this state, John doesn’t much care what he’s trying to do, he just wants him to stop it and come _away_.

“All right,” he says, trying to get Sherlock to stand up properly and bear his own weight. “Come on, Sherlock, that’s enough!”

As he drags him away from the scene, Sherlock will-outlive-God-trying-to-have-the-last-word Holmes turns around to point in the vague direction of the adversary and mumbles: “Ashtray. I know ash.”

It’s one of his poorer parting comments.

  
  
\----

“I have an international reputation.”

John cracks open his eyes at the slurred comment and looks right into the face of a Sherlock who John would have said was sleeping if he hadn’t spoken. His eyelashes are a long dark fan against the pale lilac skin beneath his eyes.

John closes his own eyes again, thinks about the sensory input down his body and realises the damp warmth on his cheek is Sherlock’s breath. The heavy hand on his right hip belongs to Sherlock too, as does the knee wedged between his.

His own fingers are clutching a handful of Sherlock’s coat.

Before John’s sluggish mind can even begin to wonder whether he should panic about or revel in their proximity, Sherlock speaks again.

“Do you have an international reputation?”

“No, I don’t have an international reputation.”

“No,” Sherlock says, as if they’d been arguing over the fact. “And I can’t even remember what for!”

There’s a pause. John feels very sleepy, listening to Sherlock’s deep, calming voice in the darkness. He clenches his fist tighter around the wool in his hand, reluctant to let go. Like a child with a security blanket.

“’s crime or… something.”

John hears but doesn’t really register the creaking of a door opening, the rustling of bags, the clinking of bottles within them.

He does register Mrs Hudson’s next shrill exclamation.

“Oh! What are you boys doing back? I thought you were going to be out late?”

“Ah, Hudders.” Sherlock slurs out the nickname, never used before. “What time is it?”

“You’ve only been gone two hours,” she says with a girlish giggle in her voice. “Honestly, you pair. Do you really find it that hard to keep your hands off each other?”

John eyes snap open and he sees the gleam in her sly, knowing gaze as she takes in their clinch on the stairs. He and Sherlock sit up suddenly then, tangled up enough in each other that Sherlock falls down a step as they attempt to extricate themselves from the cramped space.

“Upstairs with you,” Mrs Hudson orders with that doting sort of grumble she has for them, and then resumes her task of taking the rubbish outside.

On their feet again, he and Sherlock regard each other awkwardly for a minute before Sherlock just shrugs and wobbles his way up to the flat with John trailing in his wake.

That was nice. On the stairs. Very nice, John thinks. He wants to do that again.

Maybe they will if they drink more…?

Sherlock is way ahead of him, already pouring them both a generous helping of whiskey in the kitchen. He brings the bottle with him into the sitting room, banging it down on the table beside John’s armchair before offering one of the glasses to John who accepts it with a bleary smile.

They drop synchronously into their respective chairs in front of the fireplace.

Tilting forward into the space between the chairs, Sherlock holds out his drink for what must be the ninth or tenth time that evening.

“Cheers.”

“Mmf.”

They knock their glasses together and drink.

“What now then?” Sherlock asks after that.

John considers his options. He’s never seen Sherlock this drunk, with his vast, comical gesticulations, his run-together words and the fact that he _can’t remember what his international reputation is for_.

It’s _fun_ , seeing him functioning at about that same pace as a normal human being. There’s a lot he could make him do now, a lot he could make him say or say _to_ him now and he might never remember it in the morning.

Inspiration strikes.

“Have you ever played ‘I never’?”

Sherlock frowns at him. “What’s that?”

“It’s a drinking game. You have to say something you’ve never done, and if the other person _has_ done it then they have to drink. Then it’s the other person’s turn. The aim is to get the other person drunk, I guess.”

“Sounds simple enough.” Sherlock’s eyes are trained upwards for a second as he thinks about it. They drop back down when he’s made up his mind to play and he waves his glass at John. “You start then.”

“Fine.”

John attempts to come up with something brilliant that will give him an insight into Sherlock, he really does, but all he can think of are sexual things he’s reasonably certain already that Sherlock won’t drink to.

His mind is lodged firmly in the gutter and it doesn’t help his predicament that Sherlock is _gorgeous_ like this, all soft and loose-limbed, sprawling in his chair rather than perched atop it like a vulture as he thinks through a problem. John himself feels similarly fluid, warm and melting as he leans back and gives up on trying to stop his legs spreading in a pretty obvious invite.

“I’m waiting,” Sherlock drawls.

“I have never…” He’s got nothing. “…Had sex outside,” he finishes lamely.

For a strange instant, Sherlock tries and fails to raise one eyebrow at him. He settles on lowering both of his eyebrows in the end. “I can see where this game is going,” he mumbles, “and I think I’m going to lose. Or win. Who loses? The drunk one or the non-drunk one?”

“I have no idea,” John says truthfully. “Your turn?”

Sherlock makes a face like he’s never been presented with a more difficult challenge, mouth twisting adorably. “Yes. Right.” He takes a long drink, then seems to remember that he’s probably not supposed to outside of the game. “Sorry. Ah. I’ve never had sex with a woman?”

Unsurprising.

John drains his glass. Reaches out for the bottle to refill it.

“I’ve never had sex with a man,” he says, the counterpart to Sherlock’s statement.

Sherlock swirls the amber liquid in his tumbler, his eyes fixed on John’s. The drunken intensity of his expression makes John fidget in his seat.

“How are we defining sex between men?” he asks.

His piercing stare doesn’t waver. John clears his throat, images and questions forming unbidden like those on the night when he caught Sherlock kissing another man.

“Good question,” he says, clearing his throat. “I probably don’t know enough to… I don’t know?”

“In that case…” Sherlock takes a small sip from his drink and then licks his lips, all without looking away for a single moment. John’s heart rate picks up, blood pulsing hotly in his ears.

“My turn?” Sherlock asks breezily. “Hmm. I’ve never been _fucked_.”

John chokes on his own saliva at that, partly because it’s the first time he’s ever heard Sherlock use that word. He always thought Sherlock was one of those intellectuals who considered swearing to be the sign of an uneducated mind or a small vocabulary.

The smirk on his face confirms that he just uses vulgarity infrequently and for effect.

“Well, me neither. And I’ve never kissed a man,” John says then in an attempt to move the game back into more innocent territory.

“You _know_ I have.” Sherlock tips his head back and drinks, and John stares helplessly at the elegant line of his neck, that single mole that disrupts his otherwise flawless skin.

He holds out his glass and John takes the bottle from the table to pour him another drink, all the while thinking that Sherlock drinking more could be bad for his mental health if he continues this way.

“Me again.” Sherlock sounds delighted, the bastard. “Let’s see. Oh, I’ve never had a- what do they call it?” He shifts his shoulders and leans further back into his chair, hand fluttering by his head as he searches for the term.

Don’t let it be sexual, John prays.

As Sherlock thinks about it more, he uncrosses his legs and parts his thighs just a little.

John’s mouth goes dry.

_Don’t let it be sexual._

“A blow job?” Sherlock finishes.

Silence.

The lone thought swimming in John’s brain is: _would you like one?_

He should say it. What would happen if he said it?

Could he do it? Surely he could. It wouldn’t be great, but he knows the basics of it, he’s had it done to him enough times. He’s drunk enough not to really feel much dread over the prospect of doing it or over it not being that good for Sherlock, as much as he might _want_ it to be.

He opens his mouth and is promptly saved by Sherlock launching into a fit of giggles.

“Your _face_ ,” he says through his laughter, wiping tears away from his eyes. “Come on. Another game, I think all this sex talk could give you a heart attack.”

Bloody right it could.

  
  
\----

The change of game (they’re onto ‘Who Am I?’ now) doesn’t stop him thinking about blowing Sherlock, unfortunately. He keeps catching himself rolling his tongue around in his mouth at times, prodding at his teeth curiously, wondering just how big his mouth is despite having been well acquainted with it for thirty-four years this very day.

Keeping his eyes open is getting harder by the minute. He’s swaying a bit, so he tries to use the block letters on Sherlock’s forehead as a focal point to keep him steady.

It doesn’t work.

“Am I a vegetable?” he asks.

“You? Or the thing?” Sherlock points at the Rizla paper stuck on his head and laughs.

“ _Funny_.”

“Thank you. No, you’re not a vegetable.”

It’s better than he’d hoped then. John inclines his head and drinks. “Your go.”

“Am I human?”

“Yep,” he says, emphasising the ‘p’ at the end the way Sherlock often does.

Sherlock tries to push himself up slightly in his chair on hearing he’s got something right. He loses the battle somewhat. “Am I a man?”

“Yes.”

“Tall?”

Not without the precaution of a good coat and a short friend. “Not as tall as people think you are.”

Sherlock hums as he considers that. “Nice?”

“When you want to be.”

“Clever?”

The irony of sticking Sherlock’s own name on his forehead in this game to tell Sherlock how he feels about him to his face is not lost on him. John can’t keep the laughter in his throat anymore; it bubbles up into his mouth. “Very.”

“You _would_ say that,” Sherlock jokes, eliciting another laugh. Shit. He has the giggles now. “Am I important?”

Only as important to John as, oh, say, oxygen? “To some people.”

“Do ‘people’-” he actually makes air-quotes with his fingers here, and John is a goner for him. He is gone, gone, gone. “-like me?”

“You tend to rub them up the wrong way, but a few people like you anyway.”

Sherlock’s eyelids dip as he seems to gather the facts he’s collected together. He leans forward suddenly, grinning because he’s arrived at a conclusion. “Got it. I’ve _got_ it. I’m you!”

John laughs for a good thirty seconds then, breathless with mirth. “You think _I_ rub people up the wrong way? No, Sherlock, you’re not me.”

Sherlock makes a disappointed face and flops back into a careless slump again, flailing an arm at him indistinctly as he takes a drink, as per the rules. “Your go then.”

John scoots forward now to the edge of his chair, intent on seeming alert and ready to cross-examine Sherlock. He pitches a little too far forward and ends up steadying himself with his hand on Sherlock’s knee. Sherlock looks down at his hand questioningly, as if surprised to see it on his person.

“I don’t mind,” John mumbles, removing his hand and raising both his palms to give an affected shrug. Sherlock’s been touching him casually like this for two months now. He shouldn’t be shocked when John does it back.

Sherlock returns the shrug and utters a hushed “me too”.

“Am I a woman?”

Sherlock looks straight at him, snorts, and then honest to God snickers at that. _Snickers_. He sounds a bit like Muttley. Who does that?

“No,” he says. “Back to me. Am I good-looking?”

Christ, where to begin. He’s got the weirdest face and John wants to suck on his neck. And other parts, maybe.

John splutters as his mouthful of whiskey goes down the wrong way, choking _again._

“People think you’re attractive,” he says when he recovers and Sherlock stops cackling like a loon, aiming for nonchalant.

Sherlock narrows his eyes faintly. “Do _you_ think I’m attractive?”

“Yeah.” John swallows hard, feels his throat burn. “You’re all right.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow further. “Am I in the army?”

Where did that come from? Does he think he’s one of John’s former army buddies? “What? No. You’re meant to pick someone famous in this game, remember?”

Sherlock peers at the paper on John’s forehead and a guilty look flits across his features. “Oh, really? Damn. Your go.”

Great, so Sherlock hasn’t even picked someone he could guess easily. What was the last question he asked? Oh, yeah, woman. Muttley laugh.

“So I’m a man.”

“Mmm.”

“Tall?”

Sherlock grins and holds out a shaky hand in front of his knees to indicate someone short. “But taller than people think you are.”

“Nice?”

“Not as nice as people think you are.”

John has to laugh. Sherlock is deliberately making this difficult now to keep the lead in the game.

“Clever?”

“Comprehen- no, wait, that’s wrong. Comparatively? Better than average.”

“Ooh, thanks.”

Sherlock doffs an imaginary hat. “My pleasure.”

“Am I important?”

The relaxed, light-hearted mood shifts. Sherlock is quiet for a long moment, and just as John is about to nudge him and check if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open, his gaze wanders slowly over John’s face, then up to the Rizla paper. It stays fixed there, and his mouth curves into the most tender smile John has ever seen on him.

“Imperative,” he breathes.

John’s own breath shudders and stops. Not famous, not a woman, short, not as nice as people might think, clever and _imperative_ in the eyes of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock’s eyes fall away and he looks off to the side, blinking a few times in quick succession. “I’m bored of this game,” he mutters, frowning to himself.

“That’s because I was about to win,” John says softly.

He reaches up to take the paper off of his forehead, but Sherlock’s hand catches his arm. Looking up, he sees Sherlock’s formerly gleeful eyes have dulled. He looks worried, hunted, just like he did that night in the pool with him wearing that vest, playing Moriarty’s puppet and saying words he wants desperately to take back now so that they’re his own to give away again somewhere down the line.

“Let me,” Sherlock whispers.

The hand on his forearm loosens and moves upwards. Sherlock takes the label, keeping it facing towards himself, but John doesn’t need to see it to know what it says.

Sherlock sits back down and the charged atmosphere recedes, just barely. Meandering fingers pluck the rolling paper from his own forehead and Sherlock crumples it and tosses it aside without looking at the name on it.

“It was me,” he declares. “I win.”

 “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you _my_ guess. I won before you.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond to that, just folds the paper that previously adorned John’s brow into halves and then quarters. “Aren’t you wondering why I have these?” he asks.

With no clue what he’s referring to, John can only get a clue by looking where Sherlock is looking.

“You know I smoke,” Sherlock continues. “But do you think I’m the type of man who rolls his own?”

The answer is no. Every time he’s found one of Sherlock’s secret supplies – hidden in boxes, in cut-outs in books, in _slippers_ of all things – they’ve always been packets of cigarettes.

Rolling might be cheaper (hardly an issue anyway), but it would be too time-consuming for a Sherlock in need of a fix.

When he looks up again, Sherlock is pulling something from one of the inner pockets of his jacket. “I know ash, you see.” He says it with a breathy, nervous sort of laugh that sounds nothing like his tipsy cracking up from earlier. If anything, Sherlock seems passably sober at this point.

Pinched between his thumb and forefinger is a plastic bag containing a few dried green-brown leaves.

“Did you _nick_ that?”

Sherlock shrugs, drawing the bag back into his chest where he toys with it absently while watching John’s face for his reaction.

He’ll have a job, because John’s not even sure what his reaction is to this. On the one hand, he’s three sheets to the wind and can’t remember half of his medical training. On the other, he remembers half of his medical training.

“What do you want to do, smoke it? Christ, is that even safe?”

“I’m a chemist _and_ an addict, John, give me some credit. And I want you to smoke it with me.”

“I don’t know how. I’ve never even smoked a cigarette.”

That really wasn’t the objection he meant to give.

A satisfied grin takes over Sherlock’s mouth. “You should have lead with that in the ‘I never’ game. We could have skipped ahead to this.”

The fog in John’s head gets thicker as Sherlock busies himself with preparing the joint. His stomach is roiling and he wishes he’d eaten more before they started drinking. He’s feeling sick _now_ , God only knows how this is going to make him feel if he goes through with it.

Is he going through with it?

He’s always wondered what being high must be like. He has a solid practical knowledge of the effects of alcohol consumption, but nothing else. Knowing that a mind as brilliant and dismissive as Sherlock’s finds drugs worthwhile has only made him more curious about them, infuriatingly.

And it’s not like this is Heroin, or Cocaine.

“It’s just a little weed,” Sherlock chides then, as if reading his mind. He raises the rolling paper to his mouth, his pink tongue delicately poking out to lick a stripe that will seal the joint together.

John watches, mesmerised.

Who is he kidding, of course he’s going to get high with Sherlock. It’s his thirty-fourth birthday, he’s starting to get too old for this shit. Now or never and all that.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

Sherlock shrugs out of his suit jacket and slides down off of his chair onto the floor with a level of seductive grace that shouldn’t be possible after this much alcohol. He beckons with a finger for John to join him.

Heaven help him, but John does.

He has to steady himself this time with a hand on Sherlock’s thigh. The contact doesn’t earn him a look like before, so John lets his palm linger a moment longer than he has to. Sherlock is so warm, so much warmer than anyone would think him.

“Get on your knees,” Sherlock murmurs. “Hands behind your back.”

John complies without thinking about it, too busy ignoring the shiver that runs through him as he instead thinks about Sherlock saying that to him in a totally different situation.

“Seeing as you’ll probably be a worse smoker than even _Mycroft_ , I’m going to have to help you.”

Sherlock lifts the joint to hold it between his lips, wetting it with saliva so it stays put, dangling from his bottom lip even as his mouth opens while he searches for a lighter in his jacket. When he finds it with a triumphant grunt, he only has to flick the wheel once to get a flame. A click and a hiss, and then the end of the joint is glowing orange.

The pleasure is evident on his face as he inhales deeply, eyes heavy-lidded, cheeks hollowed. John tries to memorise and file away what he’s doing so that he might emulate it, but it’s hopeless when Sherlock smoking is this _distracting_.

Sherlock takes the joint away from his mouth, holds it capably between the V of his index and middle fingers of his right hand (the mark of a true smoker is always how they hold it), and exhales a plume of smoke into the air between them with a sound halfway between a sigh and a suppressed cough. As he does, his eyes close in apparent euphoria and John is glad he’s so drunk because it would not _do_ to get an erection right now because of how fascinatingly erotic this is all turning out to be.

The rumbling, sated noise Sherlock makes in his throat would be enough to do it if he were sober, it really would. He hopes he can remember this for later, but something tells him he won’t be forgetting any of this in a hurry, inebriated or not.

“Right,” Sherlock says. “Your turn. You breathe in, you hold the smoke in your lungs, you breathe out. Don’t cough.”

John’s mouth opens to protest. “No, I don’t-”

But Sherlock is already sucking in another lungful of smoke from the joint and then he’s moving forwards and his lips are hovering right over John’s, a hair’s breadth away from making contact, almost _kissing_ him as he blows a warm puff of smoke into John’s slack mouth.

John’s gasp of surprise quickly turns into a coughing fit and Sherlock collapses back into the front of the chair behind him, helpless with laughter but still managing to hold the joint aloft.

“Told you not to cough.”

“You fucking surprised me,” John chokes out, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

There’s no apology. Sherlock just reclines against the leather armchair and takes another lazy drag, blowing out a few rings of smoke after like the show-off he is.

It makes John feel very left out. “Let me try again.”

“Hmm, I’m not sure. This is rather good, I don’t want you wasting it.”

The way Sherlock is swaying headfirst into his space again betrays him though.

He’s certain Sherlock wants him, absolutely certain, after all this. The knowledge makes him feel powerful, like all he has to do is part his lips – Sherlock’s eyes drop to his mouth, unfocused, pupils wide – and he’ll have him.

“Again,” he commands.

Sherlock doesn’t waste any time. He all but crawls into John’s lap, settling his knees on either side of John’s and raising his free hand to grip the back of John’s neck to anchor himself.

The smell from the weed isn’t anywhere near as intoxicating as the scent of Sherlock that surrounds him now. There’s the pervading smell of liquor and smoke, naturally, but underneath there are more familiar scents that John instinctively associates only with Sherlock and with 221B Baker Street, their home that must smell to any outsider like a mix of them both. Tea and chemicals in the kitchen, books and dust and takeaways in the living room, the products they don’t share in the bathroom.

They’re still separated by a few significant inches, but even from this distance he can tell what shampoo Sherlock is using this month. Mint, on this occasion. (He changes when he gets bored.)

If John leaned in further, if he nosed along Sherlock’s smooth jaw, he’d be able to smell his expensive sandalwood shaving cream and aftershave balm (never changed – he likes them far too much and the pots he has are massive besides.)

Sherlock interrupts his sensory cataloguing, taking in a breath of smoke from the joint and then bending his head forwards while pressing at the back of John’s neck to bring their faces nearer. John meets him halfway and their lips bump together clumsily but manage to form a seal as Sherlock opens his mouth and breathes the smoke into him, hot and sweet.

It’s perhaps the most intimate thing John has ever shared with another person.

Sherlock pulls back just enough to let John release the smoke between them. His lips take on the shape of a proud smile when John only coughs once, and John can’t control it any longer. He catches Sherlock’s face between his hands and presses his mouth to that smile in a firm kiss.

After a terrible split-second of doubt, Sherlock moans and presses back against him, the hand on his nape clenching urgently. The hand holding the remainder of the joint fumbles at the side of them for something to function as an ashtray. With only the slightest break in the kiss, John takes the joint from him and drops it into the whiskey glass on the table behind him, relieved when he hears a small hiss that tells him his aim was true.

With both hands free now, Sherlock doesn’t seem to know where to put them. They move with a volatile sort of desperation, clutching at John’s shoulders for a moment before running down over his chest before clinging to his biceps before cradling his face and tilting John’s head so he can deepen the kiss. His mouth is similarly demanding, taking and consuming all that John will give him and still wanting more.

His sharp teeth nip; his soft tongue soothes.

The strength and force in the kiss aren’t what John is used to.  He’s had girlfriends who were rough with him, but he’s never been kissed so fervently, so intensively. Kissing has always been a means to an end before. A starter before the main course.

This is enough to feed John’s appetite for a _year_. If he could, he’d kiss Sherlock like this for hours, for days.

Sherlock is squirming in his lap, panting against his lips, almost _whining_ into his mouth and so obviously downright unable to keep still. It’s like he wants everything at once and as much as John wants it for him too, he’s only one man.

One drunk, stoned man.

“Whoa there,” he says as he pulls back. “Steady on, Sherlock.”

He puts his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders to stop him chasing another kiss. Sherlock’s eyes seem to glow even in the dim light of the sitting room, bright blue and hungry. The fabric of Sherlock’s shirt beneath his fingertips feels a thousand times more crisp, which makes no sense. Everything seems heightened, more visceral, more _real_. It can only be the drug taking effect.

“You have no _idea_ , John,” Sherlock is saying, pleading, still struggling against John’s hold. “No idea how much I-”

“I think you’ll find that I have every idea,” John tells him gently. His heart is racing, it’s doing a hundred metre sprint in between his ribs and he can feel his pulse drum in his temples, his wrists, his groin. The last one gives him some hope that he’s not too far gone with the alcohol if _this_ is happening right here with Sherlock.

He presses their mouths together again, teasing at Sherlock’s lower lip with his tongue, pulling away with a dreamy smile when Sherlock’s mouth opens at once for him. He reaches up, pushes a stray, sweat-slick curl away from Sherlock’s forehead. Caresses the prominent ridge of a cheekbone, skin once split by his own hand. He lays a feather-light kiss there, watching Sherlock’s eyes flutter shut.

It’s absurd and unfair how beautiful he is, how much _more_ beautiful he is like this. They should have got high together before now.

They should have done a lot of things together before now.

“Sherlock, I-”

Whatever he was about to say, it’s lost forever in the shock of Sherlock veering off to his left and being magnificently sick all over their floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the idea of John and Sherlock getting stoned together on this occasion goes to [this headcanon](http://takemyhandjohn.tumblr.com/post/74473563569/mallamun-alabellecreation-mid0nz-a).
> 
> Convention would have had me name this chapter 'First Kiss: Two' of course, but _spoilers_ , so you got the title of a Justin Timberlake song instead. Sorry about the misdirection. It manages to still be accurate, at least?


	13. Experiment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Baskerville interlude

_3 rd February 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

As he awaits the particulars of his and Sherlock’s room at the Cross Keys Inn, John can’t help but feel a thrill at being out of London on a case that has Sherlock’s full attention. A few hours earlier and he was harpooning dead pigs and fretting like a junkie in need of a fix. Not content to just fuel his body with either food (‘digestion slows me down’) or even oxygen (‘breathing is boring’), Sherlock lives mainly off of stimulants like nicotine and murder, unfortunately. 

John himself has a similar affliction when it comes to a need for adrenaline, but he copes far better with it than Sherlock does his own addictions.

The inn’s owner returns, keys dangling from his fingers. “Sorry we couldn’t do a double room for you boys,” he says regretfully.

On arriving at the Dartmoor hotel, the manager had said they were almost entirely booked up with only twin rooms left before bustling off with the assurance that he would ‘see what he could do’ for them. Unlike Sherlock, who was busy looking around the bar area for God knows what, John hadn’t missed the appreciative glance the Cross Keys owner threw in Sherlock’s direction, nor the way it made _him_ bare his teeth in possibly the falsest smile he’d ever given. It merely earned him a wink as the man held up his hands as if to express his recognition of John’s claim.

How laughable. A crush in the past is one thing, John isn’t sure he has any claim in the present.

“That’s fine,” John says, “we’re not-”

The innkeeper’s smile as he hands John the keys is sly, almost conspiratorial. There’s no point in John finishing his sentence and correcting the assumption at this point. Claim or no claim, they’re still a couple, just as Irene Adler said. People pick up on that sort of thing.

John shudders to think how uneasy a night they might have had in store if the room they had ended up with _was_ a double. John would have either been sleeping on the floor or holding himself firmly on one side of the bed, as far from touching any part of Sherlock as he could get without pitching himself _out_ of the bed. Sherlock meanwhile would probably be completely unaware of any tension or awkwardness and either sleep like a baby or be up all night chasing clues anyway, depending on how the rest of the day went.

They still have all that ahead of them. For the sake of getting a restful night’s sleep in their separate beds, John hopes Sherlock gets some of the answers he needs in the next few hours so they can start afresh tomorrow morning.

John hands over the money for their drinks in exchange for the keys, and the barman goes to the cash register to fetch John’s change. Looking over his shoulder, he sees Sherlock is still prowling about like some dark, menacing shadow in the bar behind him. John shakes his head, wondering how anyone manages to be attracted to him when half the time he looks so intimidating and unavailable. 

As his eyes fall to the bar in front of him, he notices the small spike with a sheaf of receipts impaled on it. One of them is for meat supplies, which strikes him as odd in a hotel that offers only vegetarian catering. Surreptitiously, he tears the receipt away from the others to stash in his pocket.

It’s not only Sherlock who can find clues, he thinks.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_3 rd February 2011 (Sherlock is 30, John is 33)_

The countryside flies by them, picturesque and completely unnoticed by Sherlock as he drives and files away items of interest from their trip to Baskerville:

1) Doctor Stapleton performs secret genetic experiments on animals. A possible lead when their client is apparently being terrorised by this atypical “hound” creature.

2) Doctor Frankland seems to be something of an ally to them. Suspicious of Stapleton, going by his refusal to speak about her. Friend of their client’s dead father. Spent some time in America, going by “cell number”.

3) Major Barrymore is keen to hide the inner workings of Baskerville. Highly suspect, but then it _is_ a military base operating top secret research.

4) _Captain_ John Watson pulling rank was oddly, inappropriately arousing to him. To be continued.

5) John thinks his cheekbones and coat collar make him look mysterious and “cool”. Mystifying, in and of itself. More data needed.

6) John was very, _very_ uncomfortable in the laboratory, after his confidence from the above-mentioned rank-pulling faded. Plenty of left hand clenching. Furrowed brow. Terse voice.

At his side in the passenger seat, John still seems on edge.

“What’s wrong?” Sherlock asks, when he can stand it no longer. It’s something emotional, he can tell. Normally, he can read John like a book (he’s all but _written_ a book on him, for God’s sake), but sometimes his moods can still give Sherlock pause.

“Nothing,” John says at once.

Sherlock waits. Seven seconds, he guesses.

Seven seconds pass. “It’s just…”

Sherlock continues to wait. Never let it be said that he can’t be patient.

“That place,” John eventually finishes.

Sherlock glances away from the road to see John’s face. He’s frowning. “What about it?”

“It’s the sort of place I’d end up.” John sighs. “If anyone knew what I can do. The time travel, I mean. That’s where they’d put me, probably.”

“You worry about being experimented on,” Sherlock extrapolates.

It’s a valid fear. Sherlock has no doubt that if the world found out about John’s ability, he’d be whisked away for all manner of heinous procedures to find out how he worked, what made him _tick_ , and all before Sherlock had a chance to stop them.

That’s not to say he wouldn’t tear the world apart to get him back. He’d lay waste to any who dared try and stop him. 

His hands tighten around the steering wheel, the leather squeaking in his grip. Sherlock relaxes his fingers immediately, before remembering that John would never pick up on that clue the way he would. Small mercies.

“It’s not a big deal,” John says, but he couldn’t be more wrong.

They pass the rest of the journey to Henry Knight’s house in silence, each wrapped up in his own thoughts.

  
  
\----  


In the end, it’s fear for John that makes him shiver and shake. It’s being in Dewer’s Hollow, having seen _something_ that his rational mind can’t explain, with Henry distressed and frantic for attention he doesn’t have to spare, and his focal point is missing. The one anchor he can cling to in any storm of uncertainty isn’t there.

There may actually be a real danger to them, and calm, reasonable, gun-toting John Watson is nowhere to be found.

He pushes Henry’s grasping hands and words away, running up the hill, back the way they came.

John will be all right, he knows that logically. He’s level-headed and he’s a crack-shot.

Logic is failing him in this instance though, his sympathetic nervous system is in control of his body now. Noradrenaline has flooded the cells of his sinoatrial node, his heart is racing madly to pump blood out into the periphery, faster than even his feet beneath him now as they try to get him to John. His bronchioles must have dilated, he’s taking in massive gulps of the chilling night air. His pupils will be dilated also, desperate for light to enter to show him what he needs to see.

And then he does, he’s reunited with John, but his body doesn’t go back to rest.

He’s still afraid. Something is wrong.

It’s still wrong when they get back to the Cross Keys, when Sherlock has denied seeing anything to Henry, when he’s seen the man’s face crumble in disbelief.

He didn’t see anything. He _can’t_ have seen anything, and yet the evidence of his own eyes does not fail him. It never has, why should tonight be the exception?

His hand trembles as he tries to drink to numb the fear, to depress his nervous system once more.

John is talking to him, trying to soothe him. He’s actually trying to get _Sherlock_ to be sensible about all of this, and it should be working. John’s voice should be all he needs to guide him back to sanity, but the realisation of that and how much he’s come to depend on him only heightens the terror he’s experiencing.

What would he do if anything ever did happen to John? He would continue, but how could he ever be the same?

Years of ardent, foolish devotion are suddenly exchanged for bitter hatred, his love twisted beyond recognition until it sits jagged and vicious in his chest. He never asked for this.

He shouts and he seethes, he sneers and scowls. He rattles off quick-fire deductions to prove his intellect hasn’t abandoned him.

“I don’t have friends,” he says, and he watches as the words pierce John, watches the arrows sink into his flesh as they were meant to.

He was meant to feel some sort of vindictive pleasure after that. All he feels is an astonishingly powerful wave of remorse and shame, despair at the thought that John might walk away from him now. He feels nauseated, disgusted with himself, with his feelings. His soft heart and his addled brain. 

Mycroft is right about sentiment. Mycroft is _always_ right, damn him, but what is he to do?

“John,” he begins, the words faint where they’re caught in his throat, but John is already speaking.

“Nah.” John’s voice is brittle. “Wonder why?”

His face is a blank mask that doesn’t quite hide the betrayal. Sherlock looks into the fireplace, unable to bear the pain of even looking at that expression in his weakened emotional state.

And then John does the very thing Sherlock feared most: he walks away.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_3 rd February 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

The discovery of the dogging site was just another kick in the teeth.

He’s not sure what to make of Sherlock’s bizarre apology either. Does Sherlock really think throwing him into the path of an attractive woman is the best way to go?

Honestly, he’s the dumbest, most oblivious genius John has ever met.

“You’re an idiot,” he tells his phone, when the image downloads.

  
  
\----  


He considers it. He flirts with Dr Louise Mortimer indiscriminately over wine, and he considers taking her up to the room he shares with Sherlock. The detective will probably be out still, interrogating his own witnesses, perhaps.

He’d come into the room after midnight, when he finally gave in to the fact that other people actually need sleep. He’d come in, flick the lights on, and he’d find John like John found him, snogging the living daylights out of another person. Maybe John would take it further, have Sherlock discover him with his head between her thighs, with her riding his cock, maybe.

It’s ridiculous and arrogant to assume she’d even want a one-night stand with him, he knows that, however many promising signals she might be sending his way. But for a moment, he just imagines getting back at Sherlock. He imagines a hurt look on his face before he shakes his head because, no, Sherlock doesn’t get hurt. Sherlock wouldn’t be hurt by seeing John with someone else.

He’d probably just stand there and tell them to hurry up and orgasm already so he and John could get back on the case or something. He’d roll his eyes and tap his foot.

Jesus, John wishes he could get a handle on what Sherlock actually _feels_ , he really does. He changes his mind from second to second and he can’t tell anymore whether he’s introducing his own biases, his own hopes.

And even though Sherlock has proven tonight just how much of a cruel, heartless bastard he can be, John still wants him. 

He must have a masochistic streak a mile wide.

Following that admission to himself, he gives up all his ludicrous notions about seducing Louise Mortimer. It’s just as well, because that’s when Dr Frankland comes along to rumble him anyway.

  
  
\----  


It’s with a heavy heart that John ascends the stairs towards his and Sherlock’s room. He hopes that Sherlock _is_ out, as he’d imagined earlier. If so, he can just get into bed and go to sleep. No frosty atmosphere, no stilted conversation.

He turns his key and pushes the door open quietly, so as not to wake Sherlock if he’s inside, determined to deal with him in the morning and not a moment before.

The room is dark when he enters, with only a thin beam of moonlight coming through the gap between the curtains over the window opposite the door. His eyes are quick to adjust and dart unerringly to Sherlock’s bed underneath the window (John took the bed nearest the exit), where he finds the man in question lying on top of the covers, eyes closed, hands clasped and resting on his abdomen.

He could be asleep, but he looks almost too still for that. He looks like he’s dead, in fact, like he’s been laid out for a viewing.

John ignores him then, turning his back to Sherlock as he pulls off his clothes, stripping to his boxers. He gets underneath the covers of his bed, insisting in the privacy of his own mind that he doesn’t feel how scratchy they are, how thin the duvet is compared to his own at Baker Street.

He gets half an hour.

“John.”

He sighs. “Not tonight, Sherlock.”

“You should know that what I said earlier-”

“I _said_ not now.”

“I meant it,” Sherlock continues. “I don’t have friends.”

There’s a pause. John is furious, tense from head to toe and just about to make a scathing comment when Sherlock speaks again.

“I just have one.”

John wilts against the mattress, all the vitriol leaving him as swiftly as it found him. He’s also suddenly far more weary than he should be.

“I’ve only ever had one. Since I was a boy, I’ve only ever had you, John.”

“I know. It’s fine, Sherlock, go to sleep and we’ll talk more tomorrow, all right?”

“I can’t sleep.”

John squeezes his eyes shut at the plaintive, vulnerable note in Sherlock’s voice. It must be the late hour that makes him hear it. It’s the darkness – everything seems worse, everything seems _more_ in the dark.

“So count sheep,” he advises, and gets a huff of laughter from Sherlock’s direction.

No further answer comes. John drifts off to a fitful sleep, filled with strange, troubled dreams.

When he awakes, Sherlock is gone, his bed is made, and John has no idea if he even slept at all.

  
  


* * *

  
  
_4 th February 2011 (Sherlock is 30, John is 33)_

He knows it’s a bad idea from the moment he has the epiphany about the sugar at around five in the morning.

John has forgiven him for his comment the previous night and they’re back on an even keel now, almost. Sherlock doesn’t feel paralysed by fear of losing John anymore, nor does he feel that awful, sickening resentment at having fallen in love with him in the first place.

John has only _just_ forgiven him, but he needs to know what caused those feelings. And he only has one test subject.

He stirs the sugar into John’s coffee with guilt already gnawing at his stomach.

It’s not as though John will _actually_ be in danger. He’ll be in a safe, controlled environment in the lab. Sherlock will be overseeing it all, and he’s the one person who would never allow any harm to come to John, not really.

Sherlock would tell him, he _would_ , but if John knew it would compromise the results. He’d get Henry for this, but he’s not the perfect control the way John is, having eaten and drank the exact same things as Sherlock since they arrived in Dartmoor. 

There’s no other way to test this theory. It’s utterly safe and there will be no lasting damage to John. John will never even know what Sherlock has done. Therefore, it’s not _really_ that bad an idea.

The squirming in his gut says otherwise, but he’s never been one to listen to his gut rather than his brain.

  
  
\----  


It’s strange how small John looks on the monitors in front of Sherlock. He creeps through the lab, snooping around initially in a way that makes Sherlock smile with pride – going in areas that say ‘KEEP OUT’, that’s his John.

With a twisting feeling in his chest, he locks the room down. John tries valiantly to escape, his movements becoming erratic. The drug is taking effect.

A moment later, his phone rings. His hand stretches out automatically, but he forces himself to be still, to let it play out.

The figure on the screen moves faster. There’s a grimace on John’s features, his jaw is set as the oncoming threat puts him into soldier mode. Eventually, though, the fear takes over and John begins to panic, trying his card on the doors again even as he knows it won’t work.

When he shuts himself in a cage, Sherlock allows himself to pick up his phone.

It rings only once before a hushed voice answers. “It’s here. It’s in here with me.”

John is panting for breath on the other end of the line and he sounds so _frightened_ that Sherlock almost forgets to reply in his shock.

“Where are you?” he asks to keep up the pretence.

“Get me out,” John says, too caught up in his terror to answer properly. Sherlock closes his eyes against the onslaught of self-loathing at having caused that. “You have to get me out, Sherlock. I’m in the big lab, the first one we saw.”

“I’m coming,” he says forcefully, already on his feet. “John, I’m coming to get you. Just keep talking to me. Tell me what you can see.”

He can’t prolong this anymore now, it’s just cruel and unnecessary.

“I can’t. It’ll hear me.”

John actually whimpers then, and Sherlock is in the corridor, the experiment nearly forgotten.

“I’m not travelling. Why am I not travelling, Sherlock?”

It’s a good question, and something Sherlock didn’t even remember to factor into his study. John is so stressed that he shouldn’t even be in the present at this point. He should be safe and sound in the past with a Sherlock who wouldn’t _dream_ of putting him through this.

This might be the worst thing he’s done.

“I don’t know but I’ll find you, John. You’re all right, just focus on my voice now. Can you see it?”

“No, I can’t,” he says, and he sounds like he’s on the verge of sobbing. Sherlock’s heart sinks at the thought that this was all for nothing, only to pick back up again in the next breath when John whispers: “Wait, I _can_ see it. Oh God, it’s here.”

Sherlock’s shoes slip and squeak against the floor as he rushes to John. “I’m almost there, John, I’m almost with you. You’re going to be all right.”

“ _Hurry_ ,” John pleads.

Sherlock jams his keycard into the slot, swipes it upwards, and squeezes through the doorway the second there’s a gap big enough. The overhead lights come on and he dashes over to the cage, pulling the sheet back and opening the door to reveal John’s wild face, his wide eyes and bared teeth. His phone is still held up to his ear.

“John,” he sighs out the name in relief, as if John really _had_ been in danger. “Are you all right?” 

He bends down and reaches into the cage to pull John out and into the open. John launches himself at him as he does, and Sherlock ends up stumbling backwards with John clinging to him, arms thrown around his neck.

Unsure what to do with five feet and six and a half inches of John Watson in his personal space, Sherlock keeps his arms held out stiffly to the sides.

“Thank God,” John mutters into his collarbone where his nose is pressed. “ _Sherlock_.”

He sags right into Sherlock and the trust laced throughout his pliant body is enough to let Sherlock know what he needs to do. He winds his arms around John’s back and just holds him while he trembles and gasps and holds back tears.

“I’ve got you,” he vows, resting his cheek against John’s hair. “I’ve got you.”


	14. Trust issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of drug use.

_4 th February 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Dr Stapleton’s soft voice breaks John out of his musings of possible reasons why he didn’t time travel out of the lab. He’s come up with no answers in all the time he’s been staring into space. Sherlock doesn’t seem to be faring any better. He’s still busy with his chemistry analysis of whatever compound it is that he thinks drugged them both, periodically hissing and grunting in frustration when he gets results he doesn’t want.

“You look very peaky,” Dr Stapleton adds.

“No, I’m all right.”

The effects of the drug have worn off now, and John is left just feeling hollow. Blank. The only thing keeping him upright at this point is the sense-memory of Sherlock’s arms being wrapped around him, stopping him from falling.

“It was the GFP gene from a jellyfish, if you’re interested. In the rabbits.”

John is very much not interested in weird genetic experiments on rabbits, but he has other interests, so he musters a brief smile.

“Right,” he says. “Come on then, what else have you got hidden away down here? You can trust me, I’m a soldier.”

Stapleton returns his smile, enigmatic with an edge of professional pride. Scientists, John thinks, they’re all the bloody same.

“Listen, if you can imagine it, someone is probably doing it somewhere.”

He recalls his first thoughts about his time travelling. He thought it was something to do with the government back then, mainly because of the lack of a report on his disappearance when he was shot and because of the slick man who visited him in the field hospital afterward, but that turned out to be Mycroft, there at Sherlock’s request to cover things up and protect his identity.

“Cloning?” he asks tentatively.

“Yes, of course. Dolly the sheep, remember?”

“Human cloning?”

“Why not?”

Well, that’s terrifying.

“What about…” John blows out a breath, ready to be looked at like he’s a nutter. “What about time travel?”

Stapleton gives him a confused stare, just as he expected. “When I said ‘if you can imagine it’-”

“You meant things more within the realm of possibility, got it.”

John hunches his shoulders defensively, prepared to ignore Stapleton for a few minutes while Sherlock finishes his investigations.

He doesn’t have to wait long – a moment later, Sherlock is throwing his microscope slide at a wall.

“Jesus,” John says reproachfully but Sherlock, as usual, is louder.

“It’s not there! Nothing there! It’s doesn’t make any _sense._ ”

“What were you expecting to find?” Stapleton asks, a cautious tinge to her words. She’s not used to Sherlock’s moods the way John is.

“A drug of course!” Sherlock begins to pace in his agitation, and John watches him go, back and forth, back and forth like a caged tiger. “There has to be a drug. A hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind! There’s no trace of _anything_ in the sugar.”

“Sugar,” John echoes, not able to follow Sherlock’s logic the way he can follow his body with his eyes.

“The sugar, yes. It’s a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound. I saw it as my imagination expected me to see it, a genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn’t believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were several possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight, he saw it too but you _didn’t_ , John. You didn’t see it. Now, we have eaten and drank exactly the same things since we got to Grimpen apart from one thing: you don’t take sugar in your coffee.”

John takes a moment to process Sherlock’s rant, and that’s when it hits him like a freight train.

Sugar in his coffee. Sherlock doesn’t make him tea or coffee often at home, it usually falls to John or Mrs Hudson to make anything resembling sustenance. But Sherlock knows, of course he knows that John doesn’t take sugar. Sherlock doesn’t forget facts about him like that, he said it himself. It’ll probably even be written down in his journal along with all the other records about him. The diameter of his scar from when he was shot, his fingerprints.

Milk, no sugar.

Sherlock wouldn’t delete that.

So why did he get it wrong when he was trying so hard to apologise?

He’s been silent too long. Sherlock is looking at him with barely disguised concern, head bent to be eye level with John.

“John? Are you all right?”

His hand reaches out towards John’s shoulder, just like when he found him in the lab earlier, and John feels his head spin. How could he have drawn comfort from those hands not an hour ago?

He steps back, out of Sherlock’s reach.

“You drugged me.”

Sherlock’s eyes widen and his mouth opens, but no words come out. There’s a rasping sound from his throat, almost an ‘I’, but John doesn’t care what he has to say anymore.

“You thought it was the sugar, so you gave it to me, and you locked me in that lab.”

At his side, Stapleton is looking between the pair of them, trying to work out what’s going on. John ignores her completely, focusing on the man in front of him. If ‘man’ is a term that can be applied to him.

“You experimented on me, even after I _told_ you how I felt about that. How I felt about being here. I told you that, and you still did this to me. The one person I thought would never-”

John stops talking, because his voice is about to _break_ , and he can’t, he can’t. Not in front of Sherlock, he can’t show how much he cares when he knows for certain now just how much Sherlock doesn’t care about him.

“John, please, listen-”

The danger of showing the crushing grief passes, the feeling swallowed by rage that boils all through him. His face burns, his hands shake at his sides, but there’s no tingling in the left one. He’s still not travelling.

The crash as John kicks over one of the stools cuts Sherlock off.

He lifts up his index finger in warning when Sherlock moves to take a step towards him.

“Never again,” he says quietly, finally, and he leaves the room without looking back.

  


* * *

  
  
_22 nd November 2005 (Sherlock is 24)_

The first assault on his senses is the overwhelming, acrid scent of piss and vomit. Not his own. Hopefully. On top of that: cologne. The kind worn by only one person he knows.

Sherlock peels open his eyelids, keeping them open as long as he can in atonement when the first glimpse of light slices through his optic nerves, through his whole _brain._

His second deduction is that he’s made it home, at least. The texture of the surface he’s lying on is that of his worn sofa in his run-down studio apartment. His first home in London, but arguably not when it’s also one of the places in London where he spends the minimum of his time.

“What was it this time, dear brother?”

Sherlock squints up into Mycroft’s face to give him a drowsy glare. ‘It’ is a bit of everything, in general. Mainly Heroin on this occasion, but he’s not going to say that. If Mycroft is here, he already knows. It means he’ll need to acquire more now.

“Your charming Detective Sergeant called again, in case you were wondering. You can give all of my agents the slip as much as you like, but you completely negate that each time the police have to pick you up off the streets like so much rubbish, Sherlock.”

Sherlock closes his eyes again. DS Lestrade. He’s moderately clever. Shame about the wife, or he’d be good for his prissy older brother. They could interfere in his life together then, encourage him to ‘make something of himself’.

What rot.

“What happened this time?” Mycroft asks, the raised pitch of his voice mocking and so, so familiar. “Thought you saw John in the street again?”

A tube station, actually, but that’s by the by.

“You’re heading down a dangerous path, Sherlock. You’re ruining your mind with these substances. You’re making yourself like _them_.”

The thought has occurred. It disturbs him, of course it does. His superior mind, not enhanced by the things he injects into his body but inhibited, diluted. Regular.

It just doesn’t disturb him as much as it frees him.

“It’s been three years since you last saw him,” Mycroft says, his voice taking on a gentler shade. “You have to let it go.”

Three years. Not even halfway through his sentence. Wait, how-

“How did you know?” he grumbles out, eyeing Mycroft with suspicion.

“Another thing that Lestrade fellow told me. Something you told _him_ of your own volition.”

Sherlock smirks to himself. “Jealous again, brother _dear_?”

“Merely troubled and concerned on your behalf. You know, the Sergeant seems to be under the impression that you’ve had a bad ‘break-up’ and now you’re an insane junkie, rambling on about time travel. He’s not far off, is he?”

They’re both silent for an extended moment. Both cataloguing the remainder of his drug use, the lingering physical symptoms. Mycroft is undoubtedly quicker at it.

“How long before he calls to tell me you’ve overdosed, Sherlock?”

Sherlock grits his teeth and shakes his head. “Won’t happen.”

“Have your veins started to collapse yet? Can you even inject into your arm anymore?”

Of course he can. He’s not had this habit _that_ long. “Mycroft-”

“Are the needles you use even clean? What about the product itself?”

“I’m in control of it, Mycroft. It’s not in control of me.”

“Oh, Sherlock. How many addicts before you have said those exact words?”

Sherlock shifts about on the sofa, pulls his stained sleeves down over his elbows and forearms. Over his hands too, like he used to when he was a child. “It helps,” he mutters, not meeting Mycroft’s doe-eyed, mournful stare. “It helps me stop thinking about it.”

He doesn’t need to expand on what ‘it’ is.

Mycroft understands the confession perfectly. He sighs. “What have I told you about caring?”

Later, Sherlock will blame the moment of honesty on the sincerity in his brother’s eyes, the sadness of his tone as he asked about the drugs.

Much later, he just admits to himself that he needed help.

  


* * *

  
  
_4 th February 2011 (John is 33, Sherlock is 30)_

Storming away from the Baskerville facility, John decides that he must be fucked up. He must be wired the wrong way inside, because it’s the only explanation for him ever imagining himself in love with a self-proclaimed sociopath. Worst of all, he must be _beyond_ stupid, beyond pathetic even, to have ever believed that they could enter into a relationship, that Sherlock could fill that remaining gap in his life.

Sherlock looked far better on his pedestal before, an untouchable God, detached from feelings.

What the hell was John doing taking him off that pedestal, giving him human urges and needs and emotions?

He produces his military credentials, and the soldiers on the gate let him leave without any further impedance, perhaps taking in the look on his face. He’s not a man to be stopped right now.

Before he can think much further about what to do next, his phone rings. A glance at the caller ID says it’s not Sherlock but a number he doesn’t recognise.

“Hello?”

All he can hear to begin with is a woman crying. It’s not a lot to go on, but he there’s something familiar about the voice.

“Who’s this?” he asks.

“You’ve got to find Henry,” the woman chokes out between sobs.

It’s Louise Mortimer.

Sherlock temporarily shoved aside for the meantime, John tries to focus on the phone call, the audibly distressed woman at the other end of it. “Louise, what’s wrong?”

“Henry, he was… He was remembering and then he tried to-”

More unintelligible sobbing. John’s hand tightens around the phone. Jesus, he knew the man was unstable, what with everything that’s happened to him. It’s probably another thing Sherlock didn’t care enough about.

It’s something _he_ didn’t care enough about, apparently, if Henry has gone and done something now. He could have stopped it.

“He’s got a gun,” Louise says, confirming his fears. “He went for the gun and now he’s gone, you have to _find_ him. You have to stop him. I- I don’t know what he might do.”

There’s a shout of his name in the distance: Sherlock.

“Where are you?” he asks Louise urgently.

“At his house. I’m okay.”

“Stay where you are,” John orders. “We’ll get someone to you, okay?”

John disconnects the call. Sherlock calls his name again, much closer now.

The argument doesn’t matter for the moment. They have to forget about it and work together to find Henry because, for all their problems, they’re still a bloody good team when it comes to things like this.

When Sherlock catches up with him, John holds up a hand for silence.

“Henry’s attacked Louise Mortimer. He has a gun, he’s gone God knows where, and we need to find him before he does something terrible. Understand?”

Sherlock nods. “I know who killed his father,” he says, thankfully brisk and unemotional (as John always knew he was – can’t think about that now). “There’s only one place he’ll go. Back to where it all started.”

Sherlock takes his own phone out, thumb pressing down on the 3 key to speed dial. “Lestrade,” he says almost at once. “Get to the Hollow. Dewer’s Hollow, now. And bring a gun!”

  
  
\----

The dog is dead. Dr Frankland is dead. Henry has gone home, already obsessing over what to say to Louise Mortimer in the morning. Lestrade has gone with him to question him about the gun, but he’s already said that Henry’s severely impaired mental state will likely prevent any legal proceedings being taken against him. Once Dr Mortimer has calmed down and had everything explained to her, John doubts she’ll want to press charges anyway.

That leaves him and Sherlock, silently trekking back to their rented car to head back to the Cross Keys.

Sherlock has attempted to initiate conversation seven times. John has shot him down on every occasion.

Partly out of anger, but even that’s dissipated after watching Frankland die so gruesomely, after seeing the unguarded horror on Sherlock’s face in that moment.

The main reason for not allowing Sherlock to talk is that he wants to work out his own speech first. They live and work together, and they need to sort this… whatever it is between them.

Sherlock stays quiet in the car, blessedly, but when they get into their room in the hotel, it’s like a dam breaks and he can’t stop the flow.

“Please, John, you have to forgive me. You have to know that it was a controlled environment and no harm would ever have come to you and-”

“Shut up, Sherlock.”

Sherlock does, immediately, despite the softness of John’s command.

“I have something to say to you,” John goes on, “and for once in your life, I want you to just listen.”

He gestures for Sherlock to take a seat on his bed, and sits himself opposite on his own bed. They’re separated by about a foot of space in the cramped room like this, and it doesn’t feel like nearly enough to John.

John takes a deep, steadying breath. “I’m not good at this sort of thing,” he says, letting the breath out hard through his nose. “I find it difficult, you know that.”

Sherlock only nods.

“You saved my life,” John continues, speaking plainly. “I came back from Afghanistan with nothing, I was broken in more ways than one, and you gave me a home and a life again. You were odd, and you could be harsh, but I liked you anyway. Then the whole thing with Moriarty happened, and I thought I knew you then. I thought the coldness was a façade, a smoke-screen to cover up how much you really can care.”

Sherlock’s eyelids dip, his eyes dropping as if in disgrace at the idea of someone finding him caring. It only spurs John on.

“But there are still flashes, aren’t there, of how much you really don’t give a shit about me.” Sherlock looks up again at that, lips parted in disbelief, eyes shining. He wants to argue, but John doesn’t give him the chance. He needs to get through this speech.

“I thought I could deal with that, but it turns out I _can’t_ , actually, not anymore. You don’t drug people you care about, Sherlock. You don’t trick them and experiment on them. I know you don’t seem to have any other friends, but you _must_ know that. You must know how much I… I _trust_ you, and I get nothing back. You’re my best friend, I’ve told you that, but you just treated me like something you put under your microscope. Don’t you see why I’m angry about that?”

Sherlock remains silent, but there’s an answering speech brewing in his sharp gaze.

John scrubs a hand down over his face before throwing it up a little in the air in resignation. “You can speak now.”

To his surprise, Sherlock doesn’t begin instantly at John’s permission. He sits quietly for a moment, actually thinking about what John has just said and what to say back. John is grateful for that, at the very least.

“I find it difficult too,” Sherlock admits finally, the thread of silence between them stretched to a maximum before it broke. “Expressing emotion. Empathising. I don’t try, most days, and it means I trample over everyone else’s feelings and I’m... I’m _sorry_ , John, for doing that to you of all people. You’ve saved my life too, in so many ways, and some you don’t even know about yet. You’re the only person that’s ever been around long enough to allow me to hurt them, and you’re also the only person I’d never want to hurt. I care far more about your feelings than I do my own. It just doesn’t help that I’m pretty careless with myself.”

The apology helps immensely. It doesn’t mean he isn’t still basically _very_ pissed off with Sherlock over Baskerville, but he’s been told now, in no uncertain terms from the horse’s mouth: Sherlock cares about him.

That’s all he wanted to know, at the end of the day.

He’s about to forgive Sherlock when the man in questions speaks again.

“When I was younger,” he says, “you visited me after so many fights with future versions of me. I could always tell, even if you never said, and I could never understand it. I could never envision myself at any point in time wanting to disagree with you, not to the point of making you travel. I’m not a child anymore though, John, and I had eight years without my moral compass. I didn’t do well in that time, you have only to ask Lestrade or my brother if you want to find out just how bad it got.”

“I don’t need to,” John tells him. Sherlock’s past is Sherlock’s. He’s only privy to the bits he can’t help but stumble into at various ages.

“I just wanted to illustrate my next point: I can’t go back to that.”

John has some idea of what he means, and it’s not what he wants for Sherlock either. He lays his left palm carefully on Sherlock’s right knee. “You won’t have to,” he promises.

  


* * *

  
  
_18 th March 2011 (Sherlock is 30, John is 33)_

He’s expecting the text after telling Mycroft that John’s loyalty has been proven following the incident with The Woman. Before he opens the message, he just knows it will contain a barbed comment.

_Don’t forget what happened with Redbeard, brother mine._

So predictable. Sherlock scoffs and rolls his eyes, tossing his phone away onto the sofa to be ignored.

“John!” he calls without turning away from the window, raising his voice enough that John should hear him no matter where he is. Mrs Hudson too, probably.

“Christ, what?” comes John’s reply, his footsteps descending the stairs from his bedroom.

Sherlock spins to face him, smiling. He throws the other, flashier phone across the room, this time into John’s hands. John catches it easily. Their co-ordination is faultless, as usual.

“Irene Adler is alive and really _is_ in witness protection,” he says.

“What? I know, Sherlock, I told you that.”

“ _No_ ,” Sherlock says at length, “you told me that even though you believed she was dead, because that’s what Mycroft told _you_. I’m telling you now that she really is alive.”

At John’s baffled expression, Sherlock adds with some uncertainty: “Because you trust me? Because I’m not supposed to trick you?”

John blinks at him. “But you already have.”

“What? No.” Sherlock frowns; this isn’t how the conversation was supposed to go. “No, Mycroft did. To see what you’d tell me.”

“At your request?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, just purses his lips.

Ah. “It was to stop him interfering,” he explains hurriedly. “He trusts you more now I’ve told him which version of events you gave me.”

“I see. Well, thank you for telling me. You tried, I’ll give you that.” John’s mouth twitches at the corners – he’s about to smile. Sherlock relaxes again.

“Looks like we tricked each other then, this time,” John says lightly, and with that he bursts into laughter just like he did on their first case together. Joyous and so far from ordinary.

He laughs long and hard, Sherlock joins him, and something is fixed between them.

 


	15. A morning after

_1 st April 2011 (John is 34, Sherlock is 30)_

Hangovers are punishment from the body for being so careless with it. The body is cruel and vindictive when it comes to revenge that way.

John awakes with a mouth that’s dry and tastes like ash and death and maybe a bit of regret. The regret is aimed only at the drinking, which John remembers a lot of, and not a lot else.

When he cracks open his eyes he sees Sherlock’s face, sharing the same pillow as his and peaceful in repose. His mouth is open, the hot breath fanning over John’s cheek and jaw smelling about as appealing as his own must be. John winces and cranes his head back, but he doesn’t quite manage to get out of range with Sherlock wrapped around him.

First priority: brushing teeth. Second: pain killers.

Struggling to cast his mind back when it aches and protests, John recalls manhandling a stupidly heavy Sherlock to his bedroom and then collapsing on the bed at his side with the vague hope that he might be able to watch over him better this way if he should take ill again. As it was, John fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow and followed Sherlock into the welcoming arms of Morpheus. At some unknown time during the night, another pair of arms insinuated themselves around him.

John wiggles in Sherlock’s grip, judging how easily he can escape from it. The answer is clearly that he’s stuck forever. The question is: just when did Dr Stapleton from Baskerville get to Sherlock and splice some kind of Cephalopod gene into him?

Sherlock groans softly then. His previously smooth brow furrows. He’s waking up and John is going to have to deal with Sherlock with a hangover. It’s not going to be pretty, he can just tell.

Distantly, John realises he’s going to have to deal with the aftermath of their smoking-slash-snogging session too, somehow.

A pressure that verges on pain in his lower abdomen vies for his attention and John’s priorities shift.

First: have a piss.

“Sherlock,” he whispers, and Sherlock’s features contort further as he resists the call to alertness.

“ _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock rouses and blinks at him, all bleary eyes and tousled hair. “John?” His name comes out as a slurred croak in Sherlock’s drowsiness. “Oh, _God_.”

“Yes,” John says, sympathy in his tone as Sherlock shifts and clenches his eyes shut again. The arms around John don’t loosen any. “You probably feel like death.”

“So why did you _wake_ me?”

“I was hoping you’d let me up so I can go to the loo.”

There’s a brief silence in which Sherlock appears to think through a few things, going by the return of the furrowed brow, and then his eyes open wide as he quickly draws his arms away. “You’re in my bed,” he says, too addled by sleep and drink to avoid stating the obvious. “Did we-” Sherlock pauses, thinks again. “I’m still in my clothes.”

John just about managed to take off his own trousers before crashing the night previous, but Sherlock was far too floppy for John to strip him. His shoelaces proved impossible to battle with, for a start. John was grateful as he pulled his jeans off that his own shoes had been kicked away earlier in the proceedings.

“Yes you are. We did a lot of things last night, but I’m pretty sure only sleeping occurred in this bed.”

Freed at last, John gets to his feet. He wobbles precariously for a few seconds but manages to stay upright. When he looks down at Sherlock, curious after his last comment, he sees only a blank expression on his face.

“How much of last night do you remember?” John asks, cautious. If Sherlock doesn’t remember the kissing, they could be back to where they were before John’s birthday, back to stumbling around the edges of something _more_. John was the one to initiate the actual kissing, after all, despite the obvious suggestiveness of sharing the joint the way they did. What if it only happened because of the high?

“I remember the pubs, sort of. You convincing me to do shots.” Sherlock turns onto his back, grimaces, and then rests a hand across his eyes to block out the sunlight where it hits him squarely in his new position. “I have no idea how we got back here, but I remember a bit of the first game we played. After that, it’s all a blur.”

John’s heart sinks. He quickly masks the disappointment when Sherlock raises his hand enough to look at him again.

“You’re a terrible liar, John. You can’t hide anything from me, you really should know that by now. Of course I remember what happened between us.”

Heart re-established in its normal resting point and fluttering with hope, John asks: “And do you regret it?”

Sherlock turns back onto his side to look at him earnestly, or at least as earnest as Sherlock can ever look. He reaches out his right hand to take a careful hold of John’s. “Not for a second. I’ve wanted this for far longer than you can comprehend.”

They stay in that moment for an age, open and defenceless as they look at each other as if for the first time. John tries to take in the full weight of Sherlock’s words, but it’s early morning, he’s hung-over, dying for a piss, and he’s not kissing Sherlock again until they’re both restored to minty freshness.

It’s going to be so much better sober.

He lightly presses Sherlock’s palm, then lifts their joined hands to brush a kiss over Sherlock’s knuckles. An apology and a promise. “Time for that later,” he says. “All the time in the world, really.”

Sherlock smiles at him, full of intent, and the remorse is already stirring in John’s chest when he pulls away to go to the bathroom.

He’s in the middle of washing his hands when the door opens and Sherlock enters, still deliciously rumpled in his shirt and trousers. His riotous curls stick out on the right side of his head and he’s starkly pale like he always starts off in the mornings before his first cup of tea serves to flood some warmth back into him.

John dries his hands, pulls his toothbrush out of the conical flask on the windowsill and hands Sherlock’s over without a word. Sherlock joins him at the sink, standing far closer than he ever has on any other morning when they’ve shared the bathroom because Sherlock is too impatient to wait for John to finish first.

Cool fingers abruptly touch the bare skin of John’s hip where his t-shirt has ridden up and his boxer shorts down. They skim back and forth, light and unhurried, apparently just touching him for the simple joy of being able to do so. John closes his eyes for a moment, basking. The room is filled with the noise of John working bristles against teeth, the low vibrations of Sherlock’s electric toothbrush. It’s bizarre, he thinks, that so modest a touch in such a domestic setting should have him this happy. Perhaps it makes perfect sense.

When he opens his eyes, he catches Sherlock’s gaze in the mirror, watches toothpaste foam bubble out the sides of Sherlock’s mouth as he grins wickedly at him, and has to spit him own mouthful into the sink before he chokes on it in his laughter.

He rinses his mouth out, pats himself dry, and waits for Sherlock to do the same. The moment Sherlock has thrown the towel over the side of the bath (he never hangs it up, the git), John presses their bodies together. He slides a hand around the back of Sherlock’s head, into his curls, and clutches the front of his shirt with the other.

The kiss is just a delicate meeting of dry lips. A ‘good morning’ they haven’t verbally exchanged yet. John lets his tongue peek out, just slightly, to sweep along the seam of Sherlock’s lips. A taste test with a positive outcome. When they separate, Sherlock’s eyes are closed and he sways a little on the spot, unsteady after a mere peck.

“Much better,” John says, referring to the taste of him. He takes in the renewed colour in Sherlock’s cheeks, and revels in the warm, blooming sensation of arousal low in his stomach at the thought of all that he’s going to do to him.

Sherlock’s dazed expression turns into a pained cringe and John forgets about his lust for a moment. He runs a fond hand from Sherlock’s temple to his jaw, aiming to soothe.

“I’ll just run down to Mrs Hudson,” he says, “see if she’s got any aspirin. I forgot to pick some up last time I shopped.”

Sherlock nods, but presses his face further into John’s hand as if the last thing he wants is for John to leave now.

They’re on the same wavelength. With a final rueful caress, John leaves on his quest for painkillers.

As he descends the stairs, his own head making its displeasure known, he can’t help but take a few seconds to exult in their relaxed intimacy in the bathroom. He would never have guessed Sherlock would be so tactile, so receptive to his touch already.

They need to talk about this, he realises. They can’t just jump headfirst into this change in their relationship, much as John wants to. There are too many issues and too much is at stake. He can’t, he _won’t_ let the most significant friendship of his life blow up in his face over a false move. He needs to tread lightly.

Mrs Hudson opens her door a minute after his soft knock. She’s fully dressed, so it must be later than he thinks. She’s also wearing a shrewd smile and, for once, she hasn’t got the wrong end of the stick.

That’s another issue: what are they going to tell people? Are they going to tell people anything at all?

“Good afternoon,” she greets. “Or is it still morning to you boys? It looked like you were enjoying your birthday night. Sherlock was so pleased you only wanted to go out with him, you know.”

“Yeah.” John laughs off the unexpected self-consciousness that creeps up on him at discussing Sherlock’s feelings with anyone else before they’ve done so themselves. “Suffering the after-effects of it now, though. I don’t suppose you have any aspirin, do you?”

“Let me see what I can do for you, dear. I do go through a lot, what with my hip.”

Returning to the flat with his prize in hand, he finds Sherlock in the living area, frowning down at his phone. He looks up at John’s arrival and catches the box of pills with his free hand when John tosses it to him.

“We’re in luck,” John says. “Tea to wash it down?”

“Please,” Sherlock mumbles, clearly distracted by whatever his phone is telling him.

John starts pottering about in the kitchen, spot-checking two mugs for cleanliness before shrugging and putting tea bags in them while he waits for the kettle to boil.

“Lestrade?” he calls to Sherlock.

He fucking hopes not. He wants to go back to bed, sleep for a few hours, and then eat a hearty meal when his stomach feels settled enough to do so. He wants to have a talk with Sherlock (with the minimum of awkwardness) to establish where their relationship goes from here. Pending the result of _that_ , he wants to either lick his wounds in peace, or fully embrace his attraction to Sherlock and finally do something about it.

From Sherlock’s earlier declaration about having wanted him for a long time, his expectations are high.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock answers flatly.

Fuck. John pours water into each of their mugs with as much passive-aggressiveness as one possibly can while trying not to scald oneself.

It’s going to be a long day.

 

* * *

  
  
_1 st April 2011 (Sherlock is 30)_

The bright side of being kidnapped by his older brother, with explicit instructions that he come _alone_ , is that it gives him time to think.

Thinking about John proves to be a relaxing consciousness in tandem to his annoyance at having been beckoned so impudently with a call-back to their childhood of antagonism towards one another.

 _The East wind is coming_ , the text had read. _Car waiting. Don’t bring John._

It’s probably just Mycroft warning him off John, _again_ , despite Sherlock’s own warning about the consequences if he interfered any further in their affairs. He’ll be glad to follow through on the threat, if it is. Honestly, Sherlock had half a mind not to bother answering the summons, to leave the car waiting until Mycroft had to force his agents to come inside to get him.

Something about that phrase struck a chord in him, though. The East wind. That all-consuming force that would sweep away everything he held dear. There’s only one thing he holds dear, the same now as it was then. If it’s in danger, from any source, Sherlock wants to know about it.

That leads him back to the more pleasant line of thought: John, kissing him. It’s happened at last in their timeline, just as he was told it would. John will want to talk later, of course, sort through the various emotional and sexual crises and things before going any further. Sherlock can do that. After sixteen years of wanting John, he can make it through an uncomfortable, tedious conversation to finally be allowed to have him, in every way.

It’s not that their friendship before wasn’t enough, per se. It’s not that the addition of sex is going to somehow make their relationship _better_ , Sherlock has never been crass enough to think that.

John is the single most important person in his life, both past and present, and he wants to fill the same role in John’s life like an equal. He knows from a multitude of experience that he always meant more to John than his shuffling parade of short-lived girlfriends, but they were giving him something Sherlock wasn’t. John was giving _them_ something he wasn’t sharing with Sherlock. His jealous nature could hardly stand it.

Sexual relationships are important to people, he knows that, and John counts as people. While they’re certainly not the be all and end all to _him_ , he enjoyed his encounter with that future version of John greatly. His own sexuality has only ever been inclined towards John and it’s a side of himself he’d like to explore further. The merits of orgasm are many and varied and there’s just so much _more_ to discover about John in the throes of passion, so much data yet to collect.

It all comes down to there being no more barriers between them. If they’re together intimately, John will deny him nothing. His time, his body, his touches. He won’t cling to daft notions like heterosexuality and the asinine boundaries of male friendship.

They will be one unit, the way they were always meant to be.

It’s a nice, distracting line of thought to continue while he waits to meet Mycroft and find out the meaning behind his cryptic missive. As much (and as little) as he wants it to be more straightforward sibling rivalry and misplaced protectiveness, he has a nagging concern that it could well be to do with their _mutual_ rival.

The East wind. Yes, that would be a fitting moniker for him.

Mycroft’s (objectively pretty, dull in Sherlock’s eyes) tight-lipped assistant sits at his side, immersed in her phone as ever. She tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear when it falls in her face.

“You ought to invest in a new shampoo,” Sherlock tells her.

She looks up, poker-faced. “Oh?”

“I think you’d benefit from changing to the anti-dandruff variety.”

Not his most impressive deduction, but it’s effective. She gives him a cold look and doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the journey. Sherlock smirks. If he can’t put his brother’s abnormally large nose out of joint yet, there’s always his frosty right hand for entertainment.

  
  
\----

Sherlock fidgets at one end of Mycroft’s mahogany dining table, enjoying the way it makes his brother sigh opposite him, several feet away.

“Why did you get a table this big?” Sherlock asks, spreading his hands atop it. “Surely _you’re_ not hosting dinner parties. It’s just a hollow extravagance, but then you always did go in for that.”

“Much as I’d like to have you snipe at me some more, Sherlock, I brought you here for a reason.”

Mycroft slides a non-descript brown manila file down the table to him. He smiles in triumph when his judgement proves spot-on and the folder bumps into Sherlock’s hands. Fingers cataloguing the weight and thickness of it (no more than two sheets of paper in it, maybe only one item), Sherlock quirks an eyebrow and looks from the file to Mycroft.

“Dare I ask for a clue as to what’s in here?”

“You shouldn’t need one. _I_ wouldn’t.”  

Sherlock scowls, doubting the veracity of that statement. They make deductions, him and Mycroft. They’re not psychic. He can’t tell what’s underneath the cardboard cover any more than he can tell what lottery numbers will come up next week.

“Moriarty,” Mycroft says then, confirming his fears on the way over. “Since surrendering himself to my custody weeks ago, he’s remained silent, despite all manner of… efforts at persuasion, by my agents.”

Sherlock could well imagine what persuasion might entail, even without the obvious pause and intonation to his brother’s words. He makes a circular gesture with his hand for Mycroft to continue.

“His behaviour was unremarkable to begin with, but with time he’s become-” Mycroft pauses again, probably for effect, ostensibly searching for the correct term. “-unstable, if you will.”

Sherlock snorts. “He was already unstable.”

“Yes. Obsessive is a better term, perhaps. You should look in the folder.”

Flicking a suspicious glance at Mycroft, Sherlock looks.

The folder contains a single photograph. A picture taken through a one-way mirror in all likelihood, because it depicts a concrete jail cell. Small, grey, desolate. In the centre, Jim Moriarty sits cross-legged on the floor in non-descript clothes, a serene smile on his face.

Around him, carved into the walls, carved into the mirror _backwards_ so that it reads correctly to onlookers are three words. The same message, over and over:

_Sherlock loves John_

_Sherlock loves John_

_Sherlock loves John_

It’s like a warped, terrifying version of a young girl’s diary.

“We know his target now, it seems.”

Mycroft’s voice seems suddenly distant as Sherlock’s focus narrows to the picture, the inherent, menacing promise in it.

 _I’ll burn you_ , Moriarty had vowed. _I’ll burn the heart out of you._

He’s still on track to do it, then.

“Is he still imprisoned?” Sherlock asks, not looking away from the photograph.

“Of course. But it’s hardly ethical to keep him without-”

Sherlock levels a hostile glare at Mycroft. “Do you think I _care_ about ethical when it comes to this, Mycroft? Since when do _you_ care-”

“Sherlock.” The force in Mycroft’s tone stops his diatribe. It’s his big brother voice, the kind he’d use when Sherlock wasn’t being clever enough, not logical enough for his liking. It’s the voice he used to adopt to speak about the East wind when Sherlock was still young and naïve enough to believe in such nonsense.

“You’re not being objective about this,” Mycroft continues, still in that same commanding voice that finds him wanting, challenges him to do better. “John Watson will be your downfall, at this rate. You lead a dangerous life, Sherlock, you can’t afford to have your enemies so easily discovering your weakness.”

“John is not-”

“Of course he is! Look at you now: you’re hung-over from a pointless celebration for him, hardly at the top of your game. You’re arguing with me, arguing with cold reason and the evidence of your own eyes because of your _feelings_ for him. If you had any sense, you’d walk away from this. You wouldn’t keep pursuing this damaging relationship with him.”

“It’s already happened. It’s happening as we speak, somewhere in our timeline. It _will_ happen, Mycroft. There’s no choice in this, you know what John can do. He’s told me we’ll be together. We can’t be dead or _damaged_ in the future then, can we?”

“How do you know? Have you been visited by a decrepit eighty year old, telling you that you’re safe and retired together?”

Half that age. The oldest John he’s come into contact with was forty, and he’s miserable at that age. Miserable and _lonely_ after thirty-seven. He’s always avoided thinking about why; too little information to come to a proper conclusion. John will never tell him before it’s time and speculation would be a waste of effort.

His silence communicates everything to Mycroft who shuts his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sherlock, you have to know it’s not my wish for you to be unhappy-”

“If I give up John-” Sherlock swallows hard at the very idea, “-that’s exactly what I’ll be. I’ll be back on the drugs in a week.”

The mournful expression on Mycroft’s face gives him no pleasure, on this occasion. He’s not being spiteful now, just honest.

“It’s not fair to threaten me with that,” Mycroft says softly.

“It’s not fair to ask me to give up the only thing that makes my life worthwhile.”

“I thought the work did that. Your puzzles. The murder scenes and mysteries?”

“Nothing without him,” Sherlock says, as firm and certain as he’s ever delivered any verdict about who committed a crime.

Mycroft can do nothing but study Sherlock’s features, the set of his shoulders, his clenched fists. He finds truth and tilts his head in acknowledgement.

“This changes nothing,” Sherlock says after a moment. “In the end, our plan is still the same. Moriarty delivering himself into your hands only facilitates matters. You’ll keep him locked down until we’re ready, as we decided. You’ll wait until I give you the signal.”

“I will?” Mycroft’s eyebrows are raised.

“You will,” Sherlock says, steeling himself for the gamble he’s about to make, “because even _you_ care about something.”

Sherlock’s heart pounds painfully fast while he waits for Mycroft to answer. His brother’s eyes flicker once more over his face, undemanding this time, then drop to the table.

“As you say. Just remember: he’ll have agents on the outside.”

 

* * *

  
  
_1 st April 2011 (John is 34, Sherlock is 30)_

Sherlock’s absence gives him time to himself, something he’d normally be thankful for. He’d chuck some stuff out of their fridge, give the kitchen a clean and generally make the flat that bit more habitable without Sherlock moaning at him for destroying his experiments or disrupting his thought processes.

Today though? Today there’s just a gaping hole where Sherlock should be. He’s never been so keenly aware of his absence. He puts it down to the cloud of _what next_ hanging over them, especially after the heated, unresolved tension of last night, the cooler, but no less charged closeness in the bathroom this morning.

He wants to kiss Sherlock again, fully alert and in control of his faculties. He wants to touch him and taste him and _learn_ him inside out. He wants to teach him and show him, too. He wants to show off for him. He wants, in short, and Sherlock isn’t there. He’s been gone for nearly two hours, and that should be nothing to him, considering how much time they spend together each day, but…

Everything has changed now, hasn’t it?

Mrs Hudson brings him tea around four o'clock, a sympathetic smile plastered on.

“My husband used to dash off unexpectedly too,” she says with a pointed look at Sherlock’s empty chair. “But he ran a drug cartel, so I suppose it’s a bit different for you.”

John doesn’t know how to respond to any of that, so he just takes the proffered tea with an automatic answering smile of thanks.

She leaves after fifteen minutes, when he forgets for the fifth time to engage in the conversation about her niece’s wedding, no longer content to ramble enough for the both of them.

  
  
\----

Sherlock returns after two hours and twenty-eight minutes, not that John was counting. (Obviously, he was.)

His pale eyes flit about the sitting room after taking in John, perched and obviously waiting on the edge of his chair.

“How’s your headache?” he asks once he’s apparently satisfied with the state of things.

John blinks at the consideration. “Mostly gone off now.”

“Mine too.”

With slow, deliberate movements, Sherlock unwinds his scarf from around his neck, shrugs his coat off. He takes off his suit jacket next, rolls his shirt sleeves up to the elbows, exposing paradoxically strong and delicate wrists.

John watches him hungrily, settling back into his chair now that Sherlock is home, in his line of sight once more. Sherlock is always a vision. In certain lighting, his unusual features border on ethereal. He’s been on John’s periphery for a long time, recognised as attractive from the start but ignored because it was easier than coming to terms with desire for a man, for a questionably _celibate_ man who seemed to disdain physicality for all that his body practically radiated it. His rich dark hair begs to be clutched in fretful need, his fair skin heats with a well-placed touch.

He’s so _different_ to what John appreciates in a woman. The differences just excite him though, like unchartered territory. He now appreciates broad shoulders that taper to slim hips. He likes lean muscle and harsh angles as much as he ever did feminine curves, long hair.

Sherlock still has a few of John’s usual preferences, of course, such as the tantalising, elegant hands, the frankly magnificent curve of his arse (highlighted wonderfully by his tailored trousers), his pink full lips.

He gets stuck on that last one, sure that he must be staring. Definitely staring – Sherlock is smirking at him.

“‘Time for that later’, I believe you said.”

“What?” John asks dumbly.

“This morning, before I left. You said there’d be time later. Time for what, I wonder?”

Sherlock slinks across the room with near feline grace. It’s not in stillness that Sherlock is most glorious, John thinks, but in motion.

Without warning, he straddles John’s lap and leans up to press their mouths together, his parted lips hot and slick. His tongue insistently demands entry which John permits without resistance. It’s pretty far removed from the innocent kiss of this morning. They’re back to where they were last night.

John’s hands come to rest on the backs of Sherlock’s thighs to support him, running further up to cup the much-coveted arse and finding it feels as good as it looks.

They kiss for minutes, hours, who knows. They lose track of time exploring one another. John tugs at the back of Sherlock’s shirt frantically, untucks the material from his trousers and strokes calloused palms across Sherlock’s back, feeling the raised lines of scars, the small bumps of moles. In turn, Sherlock unbuttons John’s shirt, presses his hands under the layer of t-shirt beneath, clever fingers finding a taut nipple and squeezing, making John gasp into his mouth.

Sherlock sinks into him at that noise, presses the hard line of his cock against John’s through their clothes.

The touch makes John pull back fractionally; away from the devastating lure of Sherlock’s lips and tongue (he’s a quick learner in this as much as in anything else). He breaks the kiss, breaks the contact because Sherlock has an erection, dear God, they _both_ do, this is happening and he doesn’t do this, but oh, it feels so good, why is he even thinking still?

“Maybe we should slow down, talk about this,” he pants the words, his voice thick with arousal.

Sherlock’s pupils are blown wide, his mouth flushed a dull red. “Not now we shouldn’t.”

He tilts forward to kiss John again, grinding down with his hips as he does. John emits a soft whimper at the new friction. No complaints from him.

It’s ridiculous – here they are, dry humping in an armchair and John is about ready to come, just from this. No clothes off, no hands or mouths or anything else he’s imagined, just rutting against one another like animals.

It’s ridiculous. It’s beyond amazing, he loves it.

The thought spurs him on, gives him confidence to replace all doubt. He ducks his head to press open-mouthed kisses to the underside of Sherlock’s jaw and thrusts his hips up, groaning when the move actually makes Sherlock _tremble_ above him, seemingly overwhelmed with sensation.

That’s right, he was meant to be showing off. What with him being the one with all the sexual prowess and all.

 _Time for that later,_ he thinks.

For now, he just wants Sherlock to come. He wants that usually lofty, detached face slack with pleasure that _he_ helped give. He wants Sherlock’s endless composure to shatter. Christ, he almost doesn’t care about coming himself at this point, he just wants Sherlock to get there, to lose it right here in his lap. Safe and wanted and _his_.

“Come on, Sherlock,” he mutters, tipping his head back again to watch, taking in the gleam in Sherlock’s eyes, the pink in his cheeks. John speeds up his movements and the friction between them builds, sweeter and hotter with each second.

“Come on, let it go.”

Absurdly, that does it. Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, his mouth opens in surprise and he jerks his hips erratically once, twice, three times, and then collapses on top of him, still trembling.

John comes not five seconds after with a cry that he muffles in Sherlock’s shoulder, dampening the silky fabric of his shirt with his breath.

With barely a moment for recovery, Sherlock’s mouth finds his again, pressing short, desperate kisses to his lips. He alternates between sucking on John’s bottom lip and biting gently at the top one.

“John,” he breathes between each hot press of their mouths. “ _John_.”

He’s still twisting about in John’s lap, almost trying to burrow into him as if they could get any closer than they are now. The fingers of his right hand wrap around John's wrist, probably taking his pulse (still racing).

He’s clearly agitated, which is _not_ the reaction John had hoped for after this. It could be the intensity of his orgasm, or it could be the visit to Mycroft that has him like this. John’s money is on Mycroft.

“Hey.” John catches Sherlock’s face between his hands, forces him to calm, to be still. “Sherlock, look at me. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

With a last shudder, Sherlock sags against him, tucking his head beneath John’s chin and breathing hard.

“Just for a moment,” Sherlock mumbles to his collarbone. “I’m fine.”

John runs a hand through his hair, feeling infinitely protective. “Take as long as you need,” he says.

They have the time. All the time in the world.

 


	16. Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't write sex *wrings hands* but I try. Oh, Lord, do I try. I like UST so much better!

_12 th August 2013 (John is 36, Sherlock is 32)_

“Do you remember how we used to be?” Sherlock asks abruptly one evening. They’re both sat in the living room with what feels like a mile between them as John shifts uncomfortably on the sofa and Sherlock broods in his armchair by the fireplace.

John doesn’t reply, taking a moment to catalogue Sherlock’s low voice (denied to him for almost two and a half days after their most recent fight). He imagines the process is similar to how Sherlock keeps things in his mind palace.

Sherlock, for his part, doesn’t press for a reply, merely unfolds his long legs from beneath himself and adjusts his coat from where it had been tucked around his knees. His face is smooth and expressionless. Had John been sitting in that position for the last three hours, he would have winced at the very least.

The particular nuances of that rich, deep (beloved) cadence committed to memory, John considers the actual question put to him. “You mean when we met?”

“I suppose. But mainly when we became… intimate.”

“We’re still the same,” John says, but he’s cautious. He knows it’s a lie even as it leaves his mouth.

They’ve never had icy silences that lasted as long as this one has. Before now, Sherlock had never lived up to one particular promise of their first meeting.

John asked him why that was once, well over a year ago when they lay in bed together, warm and sated and still touching one another tiredly.

“You’re getting so _vocal_ now when we do this,” John had teased while skimming his hands up and down Sherlock’s sides. “A regular chatterbox, just like you always are. You know, I remember you once saying that sometimes you don’t speak for days on end. Funny how I’ve never seen you do that.”

“That was before,” Sherlock had replied, his tone serious where John’s was light. “When I had no one to speak _to_.”

He had a habit of doing that, John had discovered. Making these little, unassuming declarations that were so filled with the sentiment he professed to hate that John hardly knew what to do with them.

He hasn’t done it in an age now.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock says to him in the present. “Of course we’re not the same. You don’t make me tea in the mornings anymore; Mrs Hudson has been doing it for the past fortnight. She adds too much milk. We argue more times in a week than we share a bed and we haven’t had sex in nearly a month now.”

“I told you why we wouldn’t.”

Sherlock’s jaw clenches at the reminder of a previous argument and he picks up the tails of his coat, throws them outwards to settle more neatly around him. John recognises the evasiveness of the action for what it is, after all this time.

“I haven’t participated in any behaviour that is even slightly unsafe,” Sherlock huffs.

“Apart from injecting that poison into your veins.”

The muscles in Sherlock’s jaw tighten further, one of them twitching rhythmically beneath his skin. “Magnussen-”

“I don’t care,” John interrupts, “about Magnussen. I don’t _care_ , Sherlock.”

He scrubs a hand down from forehead to chin, unaccountably worn-out. He doesn’t want to re-tread this ground, not tonight.

What he _wants_ is to sleep beside Sherlock again, to feel soft hair against his cheek or underneath his chin. He wants to feel a racing heartbeat pressed against his own. He wants to feel like he _has_ Sherlock again, the way he’s been promised no one else has or ever will.

“But you care about Mary,” Sherlock says, his voice and features hardening as he sneers. “You’ve befriended our client and this is the only way to help her. I’m sure she’ll be _grateful_ to you, in the end.”

That’s it. That hint of jealousy, that hint of _accusation_ is the last straw. John stands up and walks away, ready to climb the stairs and sleep in his old room.

Again.

When he glances back at Sherlock, he watches about five different emotions flicker over his face before guilt settles there. He’s terrible at acting like provoking John doesn’t affect him too. He always looks sad when he thinks John can’t see him.

This goes back to before Mary, before Magnussen. It goes back to yet another one of Sherlock’s meetings with Mycroft that John isn’t privy to.

John would kill to know what was said, this time and all the others, but neither of the Holmes brothers could ever be described as forthcoming. They mean to protect him, probably, but John has never felt so ill at ease, not with Sherlock needling him every day and waiting for a betrayal that won’t come.

“When are you going to stop pushing me away?” John asks him quietly, not waiting for an answer or looking for Sherlock’s expression this time as he leaves the room to go to bed.

It’s almost too much to take, knowing _exactly_ how they used to be.

 

* * *

  
  
_1 st April 2011 (John is 34, Sherlock is 30)_

Kissing Sherlock is definitely John’s new favourite activity.

They’re twined together on top of Sherlock’s bedcovers, still fully clothed but for minor dishevelment of their respective shirts from before. Sherlock is lying between his legs, hands resting lightly on John’s waist the same way John’s are on his. Their heads are the only part of them in continual motion, neither of them in a rush to push for more after earlier.

Sherlock had cut off another attempt at talking by John, suddenly standing up from their embrace in John’s chair and inviting him to his bed. “To sleep,” he’d said at the time when John had only blinked at him and wondered at his refractory period. “For now.”

Tongue-tied and still lust-addled, John hadn’t refused, taking the extended hand and allowing himself to be pulled up onto unsteady legs. Sherlock then dragged him into his room where he pushed John onto the bed, cuddled up to his side in a (somewhat terrifying) display of cat-like affection, and then dozed off almost immediately.

After a power nap of about two hours according to the clock, Sherlock woke up, rolled on top of him, and proceeded to snog him senseless.

They’ve been at it for over thirty minutes now, John thinks in a daze, and any ideas of talking or changing their pants (admittedly slightly uncomfortable) have been thrown right out of the window like a certain CIA agent once was.

Sherlock always has been good at avoidance. John can’t find it in himself to mind when it feels this brilliant.

Their lips move together languidly, parting and meeting and fitting together in new ways. Sherlock sighs into his mouth and John strokes a thumb over his hipbone as if in encouragement. _Me too_ , he tries to convey with the touch.

There’s a different sort of heat between them now, the blazing inferno of chasing completion swapped for the gentle warmth of prolonged closeness. John’s had many girlfriends in his time, but he’s never been content with such simple contact for such a sustained amount of time.

Sherlock is different, as always. There’s a sublime sort of pleasure to be had in feeling Sherlock’s tentative tongue caressing his own, growing more confident with each passing second. John feels giddy and light-headed, partly because of a lack of oxygen (must remedy that, if he can bear to break their mouths apart for long enough), mainly because every now and then Sherlock lets out these delicious, soft whimpers of need.

John opens his eyes and sees Sherlock’s are closed, his brow smooth and relaxed. He lifts a hand and brushes the backs of his knuckles down the side of Sherlock’s face, finds the skin of his cheek hot to the touch.

He’s quite doomed, of course. He’s already admitted to himself that he’s in love with Sherlock, but having this, having _him_ has only made him realise just how hard he really has fallen. If Sherlock takes this away now he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“Sherlock,” he pants, separating their mouths even as Sherlock tries to join them again. “ _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock recognises the insistence in his tone and rolls off of John after a moment, onto his back. He blows out a frustrated breath.

“Talk then if you must,” he says petulantly, but there’s no real anger to the words. “Get it out of your system.”

John turns onto his left side to be able to look at Sherlock’s face, eyes dropping to lips that are still flushed a delicate shade of rose. Utterly enticing, woefully distracting.

“I just want to check we’re on the same page,” John says. “This can’t just be a whim, or an experiment, or anything like that.”

“I don’t think it is to you,” he quickly adds when Sherlock’s features begin to close off. “I think I know how you feel about me.”

Sherlock’s shaking hands ripping the bomb-vest from his torso. The alarm in Sherlock’s voice when there was a gun at the nape of his neck and a safe’s code he hadn’t cracked for certain.

His smile during the ‘who am I?’ game as he gave himself away with one word: ‘ _imperative_ ’.

He didn’t really need to preface his last statement with ‘I think’, did he?

“I _know_ how I feel about you,” John goes on when he starts to feel ashamed for even asking when there’s such a backlog of evidence that Sherlock holds him above all else, even above the Work.

“And how is that?”

The guarded but hopeful note in Sherlock’s question is surely all the evidence he’ll ever need.

John thinks about it, wanting to word this right with Sherlock looking at him like he hung the moon and stars.

“Like you’re everything,” he says, aiming for total honesty. “Like you’ve turned my whole life around and I don’t know who I’d be without you anymore. You’re the most exciting person I’ve ever known, Sherlock. Nothing and no one has ever made me feel as _alive_ as you do.”

He brings a hand up between them, touching a finger to Sherlock’s forehead and then sweeping it down over his almost perfectly straight nose (broken once, healed well), over his pronounced philtrum, his sinfully tempting cupid’s bow and plush lower lip which drags open as he runs his finger over it, leaving his fingertip just slightly damp.

 _In for a penny_ , he thinks and continues. “You’re all the things that are meant to be attractive – smart, funny, gorgeous. You take each of those to the extreme, in some ways. You’re not perfect though, don’t get me wrong. You’re a complete wanker most of the time and you can make me feel like I’m ten inches tall.”

Sherlock’s face twists with remorse and he looks away as they both think back to Baskerville, to disagreements over the victims of Moriarty’s bombs, to a few other previous arguments and pointed silences.

“We’re always going to be like that though,” John says, forgiveness in his voice and the two fingers that tip Sherlock’s chin back up so their eyes are level. “We’ll always argue and I’ll always doubt how much you care, probably, because you’re not built for regular sentiment, and neither of us are good at this sort of thing.

“But we’ll be okay. You know why? Because I’ll catch you sometimes, like I do now, just for a moment and there’ll be this… this _softness_ to you – hang on, don’t pull that face, I’m trying to tell you something here – sometimes, when I’m watching you on a case, you’ll be reeling off some insanely clever deduction and you’ll look over to me after and you’ll _smile,_ just for me.”

John laughs and shakes his head just thinking about it. “Jesus, that smile makes me feel like I could do anything. Like I’d follow you into hell itself if you would only look at me that way again.”

When he looks for Sherlock’s reaction, feeling raw and far too exposed, he sees Sherlock’s mouth is slack with disbelief, his eyes open wide in something like fear, and so, so bright. There are a million things going on in that head of his, and John can tell, he can just _tell_ that they all revolve around him.

Amazing. This is the thing he craves: Sherlock’s full attention on him.

“That’s how I feel about you,” he finishes, somewhat lamely after the strength of his assertions.

Sherlock swallows and his eyelashes flutter down as he avoids John’s gaze for a second. When he glances back up again he licks his lips, raises a hand, and lays it against John’s face. He splays his fingers, strokes with infinite, heart-breaking reverence, and all he says is simply: “I could never love you enough.”

John smiles at the confirmation, at the fact that Sherlock should be the one to say the phrase first, albeit in his own way. His heart seems to be almost unbearably full, overflowing, fit to burst in his chest. “You’ll do fine,” he promises, turning his head to press a dry kiss to Sherlock’s palm. “You _are_ doing fine.”

“What about all of this?” Sherlock gestures between them, particularly indicating their lower halves. “You always insist that you aren’t gay, despite _clearly_ not being straight. Labels are such a ridiculous concept fashioned by dull minds, but I know they’re important to people. Are you really… comfortable, with our relationship having a sexual element to it?”

“I’d say us both coming in our pants together in my chair says I don’t mind one bit,” John replies casually, ignoring Sherlock likely lumping him in with ‘dull minds’ the way he usually does. It’s not even an insult, coming from him. “Same goes for the last half hour or so that I’ve spent kissing you in your bed.”

There might be a few stumbling blocks along the way when it comes to their respective sexualities, but they’ll get past them, surely. John feels like they could overcome _anything_ at this point, after finally getting here.

“You might as well know now then that I want everything with you,” Sherlock says, reaching out to toy with the hem of John’s shirt, fingers just brushing over his abdomen underneath. “I’ve wanted you for years and it’s given me a lot of time to think about _how_. Do you know what I mean when I say ‘everything’, John?”

John draws in a deep, slightly shaky breath at the promise in both Sherlock’s words and his touch. No one has ever wanted him like Sherlock seems to and that in itself would be enough for him, he thinks.

Since he walked in on Sherlock kissing a man in January, he’s had plenty of time himself to think about exactly how _he_ wants Sherlock. It’s not the same as having years to think about it, _Christ_ , but it’s enough for him to be able to say with absolute certainty: “I know. And I want everything with you too, as long as you don’t mind that I’ll probably be rubbish to start with.”

“I doubt that.” The words are teasing, a low, seductive rumble from Sherlock’s throat as his fingers move lower, hooking over the waistband of John’s trousers and _tugging_ impatiently. “I want to see you,” he demands. “ _All_ of you.”

Renewed arousal begins to stir just beneath where Sherlock’s hands rest and John swallows hard in anticipation. Twice in one night – can’t be bad. The thought reminds him that they’re still sticky from earlier and he has a sudden lightbulb moment obvious enough to make Sherlock raise an eyebrow at him in question.

“What is it?” he asks.

John clears his throat and grins. “How do you feel about having a shower? With me, I mean.”

“ _Obviously_. In one word?” Sherlock returns the smile. “Thrilled.”

John laughs at the wry tone that belies the true feeling. “Clothes off then.”

Sherlock’s smile turns downright predatory as he shoves himself off the bed and beckons John to stand too and come to face him.

“Let me?” he asks, reaching out to slide John’s top shirt from his shoulders. The material hits the floor with a muffled whisper.

“Seems I can hardly stop you. You’ve seen me naked about fifty times already anyway.”

“Never like this,” Sherlock says. “Not by my own hand.”

Without warning, Sherlock drops to his knees in front of him, intent on unlacing John’s shoes. John gapes down at the sight, unable to stop himself picturing what _else_ Sherlock might do on his knees like this.

Now he thinks about it, there’s a glaring ‘I never’ statement from their games last night that needs fixing, definitely.

He puts his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder for support when Sherlock makes him lift each foot in turn to remove his shoes and socks. Sherlock meets his eyes again at the touch and, in a bizarre but somehow sensual move, slowly caresses the arch of one foot and then the ankle of the other. When he unfolds himself to stand again, he’s smirking like he knows exactly what John’s been thinking about him doing. Like he’d be happy to do it.

He coaxes John to hold his arms above his head next and sets about removing his undershirt, dragging the fabric up and away. His eyes wander approvingly over John’s chest, lingering on the scar on John’s shoulder.

Long, sensitive fingers stroke the old wound without warning then, probably judging the size of it, trying to guess the calibre of the projectile that inflicted it. Sherlock’s mouth is a displeased downward curve as he probes though and John clasps his forearm in reassurance.

“This brought you back into my life,” Sherlock says, eyes and hand still on the scar. “It was the start of your time travelling. The end of your army and your medical careers. It’s given me so much, but it’s taken so much from you. I don’t know anymore whether I should love it or hate it.”

He goes to pull his hand back but John stays it with a sturdy grip on his wrist. “It just is,” he says. “And it’s given me as much as it’s taken.”

Sherlock seems to grasp his meaning and bends his head to press an open-mouthed kiss to the scar, then to John’s waiting lips.

“You now,” John mutters, leaning away so that Sherlock can’t undress or distract him any further.

His fingers fumble with the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt. It’s not fair, he thinks. Sherlock’s seen him without clothes on but he’s never seen Sherlock, not fully. He should have got to go first, if anything.

He says as much and Sherlock laughs, completely relaxed as he lets John strip him, shrugging his shoulders to help get his shirt off.

The lithe chest that gets revealed is as pale as expected but a _lot_ more toned. Aside from chasing criminals, Sherlock leads a fairly inactive lifestyle that focuses more on the mind than the body. John’s musings on how Sherlock stays fit fall away, exchanged for thoughts of how little he cares in light of how much he’s finding himself attracted to Sherlock’s masculine physique despite his usual preferences. Definitely not as heterosexual as he once thought.

Sherlock’s pectorals are sparsely dusted with fine hair but John’s gaze and hands are drawn to follow the slightly darker trail that runs from his navel down to his belt. John undoes the heavy buckle and meets Sherlock’s glazed eyes again when he pulls the leather free of the belt loops of Sherlock’s trousers.

“You’ve gone quiet,” he says, amused.

Sherlock smiles at him. “Just deciding how I want this to go.”

“Oh, are you? What if I decide differently?”

John grins and pulls down Sherlock’s zip far slower than necessary while Sherlock groans at his own folly.

To make good on his last statement, John opts for plunging his hand straight into Sherlock’s pants when he has enough room. Sherlock’s head falls back and he inhales a sharp breath as John strokes him leisurely.

John puffs up a bit, pleased with the reaction. His experience really _is_ transferrable, it would seem.

“I thought,” Sherlock grits out, “we were going to shower.”

“Maybe I want you a little bit dirtier first.”

John twists his wrist to add sensation and enjoys the extra expanse of Sherlock’s pale throat that the move affords him. The angle is weird, but he’s had enough wanks to know how to do this well at least.

He’s so engrossed in his experimenting that he almost misses Sherlock’s hand working its way into _his_ trousers to touch him in the same way.

He _does_ have plans though, and handjobs while standing up can wait. They’re certainly on the list still, along with the countless other things they have yet to do with each other.

John loosens his hand around Sherlock and savours the high whine the deprivation draws from his throat.

“Dirty enough,” John says. “Shower time.”

Feeling playful, he leans forward to nip at Sherlock’s lower lip, laughing when Sherlock does an impressive imitation of a goldfish after he pulls away.

 

* * *

  
  
_1 st April 2011 (Sherlock is 30, John is 34)_

Apart from the visit to Mycroft (which he’s very carefully not thinking about now), this might be the best day Sherlock has had in _years_.

He sighs in pure bliss as John’s fingers weave through his hair, gently rubbing mint-scented shampoo through his unruly curls.

“And rinse,” John says, strong hands turning back him around and then giving him a light shove under the spray. In a gesture that makes Sherlock’s heart stutter oddly in his ribs, he cups a hand over Sherlock’s eyes to shield them from the soapy water.

He’s being washed by John with such single-minded focus, such clear-eyed devotion that his knees feel absurdly weak and his feet falter once against the slippery floor of the shower.

Such an every-day activity has suddenly become unbearably intimate.

In the close, steam-filled space, it feels like John is surrounding him. Sherlock still hasn’t looked his fill, having John naked before him like he’s been so many times before, but now he has the freedom to really scrutinise and learn every inch of John’s body and commit it to memory in a new context.

Water droplets trace paths down his neck, over the muscles of his chest and abdomen and Sherlock nearly squirms with the effort of not following those same paths with his tongue, tasting John’s clean skin, feeling the heat and texture of it.

“I didn’t think we were here just for washing,” Sherlock says when his impatience grows. Since John cut off their exploration of each other earlier, he’s been tense as a bow-string. It’s been such a long time waiting for this and he can’t get enough now, can’t stand the torment.

“We’re not,” John agrees amiably and with that he’s kneeling down.

Sherlock knows what he’s going to do, but there’s something he needs to check before this can progress further. “Wait.”

The word is enough to stop John at once and he stands up again, looking concerned.

“Do we need…” Sherlock trails off. He feels strangely embarrassed, how odd. “Should I go and get anything for this? A condom?”

He knows both of their statuses, of course – his own because Mycroft forced him to get checked when he was twenty-seven and off the drugs completely, despite never having shared a needle or engaged in sexual intercourse, and John’s because he’s a medical person with (until recently) ever-changing girlfriends: scrupulous about his health, but careless with his paperwork at times. He ought to know by now that anything left on the kitchen table is fair game to Sherlock.

It’s nice to ask first though, isn’t it? Not asking would be one of those ‘not good’ things John cares about so much.

John smiles at him and Sherlock knows he did the right thing. “I’m clean and I know you are too. Hang on. You giving me your test results a couple of months ago,” he says slowly, “was that you flirting with me?”

Sherlock fidgets. “You’re a doctor; I thought you might be interested to know.”

“Try again.”

“It was a reassurance, following a few instances when we were both injured and bleeding on one another?”

John laughs brightly, catching Sherlock off guard. He leans up and presses their lips together.

“Worst flirting ever,” he says when they part by a fraction of an inch, before Sherlock can take hold of him and deepen the kiss. The teasing words are breathed into Sherlock’s mouth, making him shiver.

John goes to his knees again and pushes at Sherlock’s hips until his back hits the tiles, putting him out of range of the spray from above. He shivers again, just once, and then John’s mouth is around him, hot and tight, and he forgets all other sensation.

Most remarkably of all, his mind quiets. He doesn’t have any thoughts of Moriarty or Mycroft or murders.

He just lets himself _feel_ as his focus narrows to an awareness of his own body. No wonder his brain is going haywire, it will be saturated with reward chemicals at this point to ensure he doesn’t let the stimulation stop.

He couldn’t if he tried. He’s overwhelmed with pleasure, unable to even recall the names of the magnificent spots John’s tongue is flicking over, thoughts an incoherent babble of _yes, John, please, more, God_.

He keeps his hips still, conscious of choking John, so vulnerable on his knees before him. He looks down in awe and takes in John’s swollen lips moving up and down his cock, his left hand curled around the base. He’s the picture of sex with his flushed cheeks and closed eyes. For some reason, it’s the sweep of his sandy eyelashes that Sherlock finds himself fixating on.

John has never done this before but he’s not holding back. He’s confident and sure, like always, and Sherlock is in love with him.

It must be the hormones that cause the added burst of affection he feels for John in that moment.

He’s weathered, battle-scarred, and ageing. To all the world, he looks like an average man.

The world is stupid. John is brave. He’s beautiful, extraordinary, and he has no equal.

The thoughts alone spur him on towards climax and his hands move fretfully at his sides as he gets close. He doesn’t know what to do with them, doesn’t know whether he ought to give John some sort of warning of the imminent.

John opens his eyes then, wide and expectant as he looks up at Sherlock. He sucks hard and the moment for warning him of anything has passed as Sherlock comes with a bitten-off gasp of John’s name – the only thought in his head.

He ends up on the floor of the shower with John kissing him gently as he comes down. Sherlock kisses back when he regains his senses, picking out the new flavour in John’s mouth and recognising it must be his own. He cradles the back of John’s head to stop it hitting the hard tiles behind him with fingers tangled in his wet hair as he chases the rest of that taste to catalogue it.

John’s erection sits against Sherlock’s hip. No rutting, no moves to seek his own pleasure. Sherlock kisses him one last time before rearranging himself in the cramped space. John watches him curiously, a slight frown marring his features. Sherlock smoothes away the expression with a thumb.

“You now,” he says, repeating John’s earlier words to him. He pushes John’s thighs apart so that he can lean forward and take John into his mouth.

He’s too eager, and tears spring to his eyes when the head of John’s cock just brushes the back of his throat. For a moment, he’s mortified, because he _needs_ to cough, but he’s trying to give-

John stops his panicking. He pulls Sherlock back up with careful hands, lets him splutter and swipe at his stinging eyes without laughing. When he’s recovered, John strokes a thumb across his lips and shakes his head in wonder.

Wonder at how bad Sherlock is at oral sex, probably.

He should have prepared for this, he realises. There were all number of occasions when he could have taken up offers and practised so that this wouldn’t happen. If only he hadn’t been so repulsed because it wasn’t John offering… Then again, he wouldn’t trust anyone else enough to attempt to do this for them, not even in the name of perfecting a skill.

He feels disconcerted and out of sorts now with the person he trusts most in this world.

“You don’t have to do this,” John says. “Just because I did, doesn’t mean it’s a challenge to reciprocate.”

Sherlock scowls at him. “I never do anything I don’t want to.”

“I know that. I’m just making my position on it clear. You don’t have to impress me Sherlock, you do enough of that on a daily basis anyway.”

“Noted.”

John rolls his eyes fondly. “Don’t be a prat. I’m just saying you can go as slow as you want with me.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him and sees the very moment when John realises what he’s said.

“Now, don’t be cruel to me Sher- _oh_.”

Sherlock takes a smaller mouthful this time, lets his hand cover what his mouth can’t, and sets about establishing a torturously slow rhythm of his pulls with both.

 _Largo_ , he thinks, running his tongue over the ridges and contours of John’s cock and learning the shape and texture of him. He learns which areas are most sensitive so that he can return to lick or suck at them with varying force and pressure to find out what John likes best. (Turns out he likes a mixture of soft and strong, as predicted.)

He swaps to _larghetto_ when John calls him a bastard, sucking harder and sliding his tongue along the corona and frenulum more often, which John is _particularly_ responsive to.

He tastes pre-ejaculatory fluid and swaps to _allegro_ when John starts to plead.

Blindly, Sherlock reaches up for one of John’s hands and pushes his fingers through his curls before taking his own hand away. John’s fingers scrunch and pull just so and Sherlock moans softly, registering the answering moan the vibration elicits from John.

“Jesus. _Sherlock_. I’m so close.”

Sherlock’s reply is to make the noise again, louder this time, more forceful.

“F-fuck.” John stutters the curse word and Sherlock opens his eyes to glance up at him, trying to capture the way his face looks as he teeters on the brink so it can remain in his mind palace forever. “Sherlock, I’m-”

The moment shatters and Sherlock has another face to render as John shudders through his orgasm. Also a taste to record. Sherlock swallows until it fades on his tongue, until John weakly pulls at his hair to make him stop.

“Too much,” he gasps, over-stimulated.

Sherlock releases him at once then and John sags against the wall as all the tension bleeds out of him. Sherlock goes with him, sprawling against his chest and counting his elevated heart rate.

“Bloody hell.”

“Quite,” Sherlock agrees.

They stay quiet for a long few moments, listening to John’s breaths slow to their normal speed again, Sherlock feeling his heart rate do the same.

The spray from above turns cold and their lips are cool when they press them together in a brief, weary kiss.

“Mrs Hudson is going to kill us when she sees her water bill,” John sighs when they part.

The ensuing giggle fit takes quarter of an hour to pass.

 


End file.
